Humorous Anecdotes, Observations & Accounts of Marathon Running & Agile Adventures.
This article provides detailed information on all South Africa’s August and September 2025 marathons including race descriptions and recommendations. You can find the full 2025 marathon / ultra calendar here.
A summary of your choices is below:
Kate Jones was recently diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. She is planning to run Comrades in 2027 and would like to get into contact with other Comrades runners who suffer with this chronic autoimmune condition about training and race day approaches.
Kate, an actuary by trade, completed her first marathon in Melbourne last year in a very respectable 3:39 and is currently training for the Sydney Marathon. These are all stepping for stones for her “biggest goal over for the next few years” – Comrades.
An eight-month mystery surrounding Toni Cavanagh’s missing marathons has finally been solved. This comes after the revelation from none other than Toni Cavanagh herself, under oath in a signed affidavit, that her 6 missing marathons, 30+ missing half marathons and the ultra distance road and trail events claimed on her CV are “based on the compilation of my own races run and accomplishments, which include events, personal training, endurance runs and self-led challenges.”
One of the Comrades stats I am interested in every year is, “Who goes through Drummond the slowest and still earns a medal?”
There are usually just a handful of people who go through Drummond and cross the finish line under 12 hours and someone going through Drummond over 6h10 and earning a medal is a rarity. This year the distance from the Drummond timing mat to the finish meant that the second ‘half’ was 380m longer making a negative split an even more impressive feat.
Continue reading “Comrades 2025 Runner Stories: A 24 minute negative split for an 11:59:38 finish”
Every now and again I get asked an interesting question that deserves its own article. In this case the asker was Maretha Smit and the question was, “Do you know who has the most Isavel Roche-Kelly medals? Introduced in 2019, the maximum possible is 5. I have 4.” But, before answering the question, I think we should take a look at how Maretha earned her medals…
Maretha was a good athlete at school specialising as a 100m sprinter. She played first team netball at Hoërskool Roodepoort and earned provincial colours for athletics. As her 21st birthday approached, she had an unusual birthday present request – a half marathon entry. Her dad was happy to oblige – they travelled down to the Cape and ran the 2010 Two Oceans half marathon together finishing in 2:11:38 and, despite not being able to walk properly for two weeks afterwards, Maretha’s love of distance running was born.
