Coastal Marathon (When you start to go postal…)

[MARATHON #270 / UNIQUE MARATHON #164 / 4 August 2024]

Most people have their Comrades dreams (or more commonly nightmares) in the build up to the event but for the last two years mine have occurred after the race. In late July and early August I was neck deep in the post-Comrades quagmire. I wasn’t sure whether I was mentally in the right space to run a marathon but I figured that if you start to go postal, then it’s time to go coastal…

Therefore, I made a very late midweek call to enter and book flights to East London for the inaugural Coastal Marathon. My friend Julian had made a much earlier call and had found accommodation within walking distance of the start so I joined him after arriving on a late Saturday flight.

Race morning greeted us with an icy-cold wind and I took shelter in the reception area of the George Randell High School, whose grounds served as the race venue. The harsh face brick décor, dark wooden trimming and horror film lighting conditions brought back memories of my own school days. The sombre mood was further exacerbated by the threatening sign below on the library door – there’s a Conan the Librarian in every public school.

A day before the race, photographer Dean Venish had posted a social media message to all runners that no personal seconding would be allowed along the route. Therefore, I found the school’s motto “Nulli Secondus” rather appropriate. Latin scholars will no doubt point out that ‘Second to none’ is a better translation of the motto (a mantra which eventual race winners Gift Chegomarawa and Refeloe Solomons achieved in the men’s and women’s race respectively).

We set off at 6am sharp and relied on the streetlights in the early stages of the race until the lazy sun started to rise. After a short while the wind dropped, and it was very pleasant running conditions for most of the race. However,  the weather did turn as the morning progressed and Julian complained that the violent wind ruined his hairstyle in the latter stages of the race.

All of the other races in the East London area are point-to-point so this race provides local runners with much easier race morning logistics. The route itself is very simple as you run out of the school grounds, turn left onto Settlers Way / R72, run until the half marathon mark near Kidd’s Beach, turn around and then run home again. The course also provided plenty of nostalgia for Julian (and other local runners) as it was the part of the old Washie 100 miler route.

The race is the brainchild of Nedbank East London Running Club Chair Dr. Edwin Frauenstein with a bit of help from his fiancé Nadia and the rest of the Nedbank team, “It was about time we did something big. We are Nedbank, after all, so how could such a reputable brand in road running not host a marathon event? We felt like we owed this to the running community.”

As for the name, “That was pretty simple, obvious, and catchy. If I correctly recall, it took myself and Nadia less than an hour to come up with the name back in 2023.” Nadia also designed the medal which “cost significantly more than the typical medals at East London events, where the focus is often on T-shirts.”

During the race I did note a certain amount of false advertising since the race was called the ‘Coastal Marathon’ but, other than a glimpse of salt water by standing on tip toes at certain points on the route and some actual coastline visible on the distant horizon 2km from the finish, the race is void of sea views. I have also never seen a buffalo in Buffalo City.

After the race I sent Dr. Frauenstein, who is a senior lecturer at Walter Sisulu University specialising in cybersecurity, my standard race organiser questions supplemented by a couple of tongue-in-cheek questions (I even put a smiley face after them). I was also relying on my reputation preceding me but I should have been more explicit. My experience with both professors and cyber security professionals is that they take life rather seriously – combining these two traits with a Germanic bloodline and you have the recipe for the most uber-serious ‘mensch’ on the planet.

The two questions were:

• Did you get the opportunity to apply any of your cyber security skills in organising the race?
• With regards the name, do you have any statement on the ‘false advertising’ of calling it the Coastal Marathon when you don’t actually get to see any of EL’s great beaches during the run? 😊

To both questions I received a 10/10 exam answer. The cyber security answer covered all the potential threats and countermeasures that were taken to prevent identity theft as well as considerations I would never have thought of like, “the application of cybersecurity principles from my side in the legal aspects, such as preventing intellectual property infringement. I had to obtain approval from various companies to use their logos on our posters.”

Although Dr. Frauenstein, preempted his reply to the second question with, “I hope you are making a tongue-in-cheek joke about false advertising”, he played it safe by providing several paragraphs of eloquent defence on the choice of marathon name that would make any lawyer proud.

I assured him that both questions were indeed asked firmly tongue-in-cheek. Little did he know that it was just an elaborate set up for the social media post below (which is quite possibly the first – and only – cyber security dad joke in existence).

Whilst Germanic cyber security professors may be very highly strung, they do make for excellent race organisers and the inaugural event was faultless in its execution. On the other hand, the race vibe itself was very relaxed – as things tend to be in East London running circles. The laidback atmosphere extends to roadside advertising as you can see from the photo below.

Although we did not get to see much coastline, there were plenty of picturesque river crossings along the route including the Gulu, Umgwenyana and Igoda river mouths.

There are plenty of undulations, mostly gentle, that leave you with a total climbing elevation of just over 400m. However, you meet the lowest point on the route at 18 and 24km and the highest at 2 and 40km – so you definitely have a more difficult second half.

Despite this being a popular training route, I confirmed with Dr. Frauenstein that none of the climbs have any official names, “Unfortunately, those hills have no popular/nicknames.” The biggest climb is the 3km climb from 29 – 32km which I would henceforth propose calling “Frauenstein’s monster”.

The tables along the routes were all excellent with my pick of the race being the Blue-Corp team at the 12 and 30km mark. They went all out and even had inflatables – although the crocodile and dinosaur costumes jolted me back into thinking about the interim Comrades Board.

Speaking of Comrades, one of the benefits of travelling around the country to run marathons is that you get to meet some legends of the road. At the start, it was great to bump into Sharon Bosch, who together with her husband Colin, have 56 Comrades medals between them. Sharon is currently the chair and Colin the club captain at Old Selbornians.

Colin has been a type 1 diabetic for the last 45 years and has to carefully manage his sugar levels. However, it was Sharon who needed a ‘sweetener’ over the last few kilometres of the race. I managed to get a shot of her second Jägermeister shot at the last support table (I assume Colin was the designated driver after the race).

According to some ‘research’ I’ve done, “Sugar alcohols, also called polyols, are a type of carbohydrate whose structure resembles both sugars and alcohol.” Sounds like the ideal running supplement!

One of the items on my writing backlog is to do an article of the Comrades couples with 50 or more finishes. However, I think the Boschs are unique in that they are the only couple where the ‘fairer’ half has more finishes – 31 vs 25 (although Colin has lost out on a few finishes due to complications with his condition).

The wind did start to pump over the last few kilometres which meant the finish in the school grounds was a little less festive than it would have otherwise been. In addition to the medal one also received a handful of edibles from Nedbank’s nutritional sponsors FutureLife, Biogen and Thirsti. I was also promised some Bavarian brew but sadly the 1,000 unit consignment got stuck in Cape Town so I had to wait until I got back to the airport before having a post-marathon beer.

The Coastal Marathon provided a great break from the keyboard. I am cautiously optimistic that I won’t start to go postal after Comrades 2025 but, in a worst case scenario, it’s good to know that I can make another foray to East London and dose myself up with another 42 kilometres in Dr. Frauenstein’s laboratory.

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