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.
Maretha is a specialist anaesthetist so it is appropriate that her running career started out sedately. It wasn’t until 2015 when her husband, Dewald, challenged her to “up her game” and do a full marathon so that she could “become a real runner” that she joined a running club and progressed beyond the half marathon distance. Maretha graduated from her running internship with a 3h57 Kaapsehoop Marathon at the end of 2015.
Little did Dewald know what he was getting his wife (or himself) into with that challenge – or that the common definition of what makes one a ‘real runner’ in South Africa is not just a marathon but running Comrades, which Maretha naturally completed in 2016. The record shows that Maretha now has well over 50 marathons and ultras to her name. Maretha cheerfully observes, “He probably regrets that decision now because what started out as a once off thing, soon turned into me having completed 8 consecutive Comrades* and Two Ocean’s ultra races.”
* During Covid, Maretha also completed both virtual full distance Comrades, one of them included running 37 laps around Rondebosch Common raising R65,000 for the SPCA.
Maretha has managed to return the favour, ensuring that overseas holidays include a marathon and that Dewald pays off his carbon footprint by running as well. According to Maretha, Dewald has a rather large carbon footprint, “Dewald, will run, but under duress only. He’s a big guy, over 100kg, and running doesn’t come naturally to him. He much prefers being in the gym. Having said that, he’s committed to doing 10 Oceans halves (now on 7), and all the international marathons that I enter us for!”
The most recent was the Berlin Marathon in 2024 where Maretha ran a PB 2:49 and then had time for a shower and a couple of hours of sightseeing, before returning to see Dewald finish in a respectable 5:36 considering his training program, “He did less than 100km training over 6 months (I tried my best!) He would be described as the classic ‘jogger’ by our previous Comrades chairman.”
Although Maretha has a PB of 6:56:10 on the Comrades Up in 2024 and 6:57:56 on the Down in 2023 (she was one second slower this year but over a much longer course), it took her years to progress to this level, “I started at the back, with my first couple of Comrades being around 9-10hrs and my marathon times 4hrs. But years and years of stubbornness and consistency have finally paid off and I now frequently qualify to start at the front.”
Maretha’s advice for those currently at the back of the pack with aspirations to move forward is, “One thing I’ve learned over time is that one can never be too greedy with running, you have to be extremely patient and allow the times to come to you, not the other way around. Difficult words to live by, but I have had to learn the hard way, like everyone else.”
However, there is one glaring gap in Maretha’s running CV – the absence of a silver medal. Her Comrades record reads 3 bronze, 1 Bill Rowan and 4 Isavel Roche-Kellys, her Two Oceans ultra record consists of 4 bronze and 4 Sainsburys and even her Two Oceans half marathon record is a silverless 6 bronze medals.
I asked her about the dilemma of being too fast for a Comrades silver and too slow for the Two Oceans silver, “Women are naturally better at pacing themselves, but if you want to run under 4 hours at Two Oceans, you HAVE to start at a blistering pace as you can’t run a negative split on the hills in the second half. There is no option to start conservatively and ‘pace yourself well’. Whereas in Comrades, it’s the complete opposite. Women don’t have the testosterone induced adrenaline rush from the gun. Our bodies know how to suffer and we will delay the onset by as much as we can.” The stats certainly support this argument as women crush the men from the same batch over the second half of Comrades.
READ MORE: Run Like a Girl (A Guide to Optimal Pacing at the Comrades Marathon)
Maretha used some stats of her own to further illustrate the point, “The two are very different. For example, at Two Oceans this year there were no silver female finishers – you either ran a sub-4h Gold or you got a Sainsbury medal. The same goes for 2023 & 2022. Last year there was only one silver medallist – Jeannie Henderson who made it by 1 second in 3:59:59. That just shows you how tough the course is.”
My natural follow-up question was, “Would you prefer to get a silver at Two Oceans or a gold at Comrades?” Maretha’s candid response was, “Sjoe! If you asked me 5 years ago, I would’ve said it’s probably ‘easier’ to get a Comrades gold but times have indeed definitely changed. A Two Oceans sub-4 is definitely still within my reach, but a Comrades gold is now so far gone for a social runner with a full-time job it isn’t even funny.” My bet is that when Maretha does break 4-hours at Two Oceans it will be for a gold and she’ll have to return for another shot at silver.
Maretha’s running accomplishments are really impressive as are her academic qualifications – she earned a distinction in her undergraduate MBChB degree from the University of Pretoria and received another distinction for her Master of Medicine in Anaesthesiology from the University of Cape Town. However, all these achievements pale into insignificance when compared to her ability to infiltrate an elitist Cape Town running group called, the “Outliers”. Cape Townians are notoriously cliquey and have a prophylactic-type resistance to highvelders penetrating their social circles so I asked Maretha, “How did a girl from Roodepoort Hoërskool manage to crack the entry code for the Outliers?”
Maretha starts off with a bit of framing, “The Outliers group is definitely by invite only! You have to join a couple of the Wednesday morning MWLRs [that’s mid-week long runs which I would hope is pronounced ‘maulers’] at 5am, this constitutes the Two Oceans half marathon route at a sub 5min pace, before you could be allowed in. You also can’t be a chop – come on, you have to be a bit cliquey in Cape Town.”
Basically it was a case of when you keep getting chicked*, ‘if you can beat ’em, get ‘em to join you’. Maretha continued, “I started passing the okes in some of the local races and they took notice. One of them invited me to join these MWLRs, which I did on and off for about two years before I became a more frequent flyer and was eventually allowed into the group.”
* Although, when getting passed by Maretha the traditional biblical term of ‘getting smited’ would be more appropriate.
Maretha gives a lot of credit to the Outliers for her improved and sustained running performance. The Outliers do have a very impressive track record. Since their origins as in 2016 an accountability roll call for Wednesday long tempo runs and track sessions for full-time working professionals, their members have scored 98 silver medals at Comrades from 219 starts. This year alone added 12 silvers from 24 starters.
Scouring the internet, the only digital footprint I could find was a locked Strava group. The Outliers are a super-secret society sitting somewhere between the Freemasons and the Illuminati. However, I realised that I have previously interacted with one of their members, Ashley Driver, when he (on behalf of the Outliers) made a very generous donation to an initiative I was running to help cash strapped runners get entries for Comrades and Two Oceans in pre-Covid times. The Outliers alone funded well over 20 entries.
READ MORE: I offered Comrades runners trust-based loans: This is what happened
I knew that I would not be able to infiltrate the Outliers on pace. Therefore, under the guise of getting some more information on Maretha I decided to contact Ashley and put my investigative journalism skills to the test to see whether I could get some more information on the Outliers at the same time. After some pleasantries like congratulating Ashley on another well-earned Comrades silver, I gave him my email address and phone number and waited.
It wasn’t long before I got a WhatsApp voice note from unofficial Outliers spokesperson Daniel Cunnama. Although the Outliers official founder is Dave Schaffler, Daniel was directly responsible for the Outliers name. During a 90-minute WhatsApp conversation on 23 July 2018 that covered topics as diverse as in-race defecation, Malcolm Gladwell podcasts and Ed Whitlock (and whether it was more likely to run a sub-3 marathon or have a threesome over 70), Daniel disclosed that chess was his “fall back sport” and that he had received colours for both chess and running at school.
In the great Gladwellesque tradition of creating facts to support the theory, Schaffler hypothesised that the odds of getting colours for both chess and running would be 0.000001% and that Daniel was the reason why people wrote books like “Outliers”. William Robinson, a late joiner to the conversation, revealed that he too had obtained school colours for chess and running.
This resulted in another group member, Duncan Gilmour, to make the giant statistical leap “Incredible, only 76 people out of 7.6 billion in the world and 2 are on this group!” (he did support this claim by referencing the www.worldometers.info site). The date timestamps that I have on this conversation show that it took Schaffler exactly 39 seconds from this revelation to change the group name to “Running Outliers” and the name has stuck ever since.
The Outliers are a competitive and supportive group that has resulted in all the members improving their individual performances and realising their potential. They are non-denominational run crew consisting of members from various official running clubs but do have a comprehensive range of their own merch ranging from shirts, vests, jackets, towels, caps, socks to beer-holders and proudly wear all of it during our group runs and get togethers.
I did ask whether the Outliers had an official handshake and was given an unequivocal, “Certainly not”. However, I imagine that if they did have an official handshake, they wouldn’t tell me and if they didn’t, they are probably working on one now!
Daniel was quick to point out that the Outliers are “not an elitist clique” clarifying, “we’re probably sub-elitist at best”. Speed is relative! Daniel explained, “It’s a special group that we’ve managed to put together with mostly silver-paced runners, or there or thereabout. Some faster, some slower and a very positive vibe. There is an unofficial motto within the group that, ‘Everyone else in the group thinks you’re better than you think you are!’”
Daniel continues, “I guess that’s why Maretha fits in so nicely, because she is a very kind, generous and positive person. She’s incredibly enthusiastic about running and is always very happy to help and contribute.” Daniel also expressed appreciation that Maretha regularly volunteers her husband to second them on long runs.
On Maretha’s running abilities, Daniel says, “Maretha is definitely one of the standout members. She’s as tough as nails – and one of those incredible athletes who on the day just has huge BMT. She’s an incredible runner, juggling her high-flying career as an anaesthetist, which means she’s regularly on call, working late nights – sometimes through the night – and then still manages to get her runs in and keep a smile on her face.”
This sentiment was shared by a couple of other Outliers that I spoke to, Mark Hankin and Ashley Driver. Mark went so far as to suggest that “GRIT should be her middle name – Maretha never gives up. Maretha Grit Smit!” Interestingly, Maretha’s actual middle name is Isabel which is suspiciously close to Isavel!
Ashley recalled his first meeting with Maretha after Comrades 2022 (where Maretha had just earned her first IRK with an 18th placed 7:11:51), “I had just summitted the Moses Mabhida stairs with an almighty struggle when she came effortlessly bouncing up. Maretha seemed to know nearly everyone around and was having excited conversations with all of them. When I found out that she’d recently moved to Cape Town and regularly trained in our local neighbourhood there, it made perfect sense for the Outliers to recruit her since her pace and dedication were a perfect fit for us.”
The added bonus was that the Outliers gained a team doctor and, as Maretha coaches herself, some valuable insights and perspectives into their overall body of knowledge (I expect that the Outliers have a heavily guarded leather bound book chronicling their training secrets). On old dogs learning new tricks, Ashley said, “I got a real lesson from her on work and training ethics during her build up to the 2024 Berlin Marathon where she managed to squeeze in many awe-inspiring training sessions despite being on long periods on call for work at crazy hours.”
There is one other Gauteng staple that has managed to infiltrate the Outliers – the ‘Rumbler’. This is a concoction consisting of a shot of rum inside a beer which has to be downed in one go (or you get served another). This has become a way of life amongst the Outliers. According to Maretha, “The only way to celebrate a good run is with a Rumbler” but you can also earn one “for having a shitty run or sandbagging your predicted time.”
Aside: I’ve done the research and no one is too sure who actually invented the Rumbler. There are many stories and rumours about the origin, the most plausible of which is that it was Satoshi Nakarumbler and resulted in him inventing bitcoin and changing his name to Satoshi Nakatomi to make him harder to trace. However, there is 100% certainty that the Rumbler was popularised by Wanderers Athletics Club (and I can personally testify to this, having been badly ‘rumbled’ on several occasions courtesy of my brother-in-law and his Wanderers clubmates).
Now, there may still be a few people who have gotten this far into the article and are patiently wondering what the answer to the original question is. For those who’ve forgotten, the question was “Who has had the most Isavel Roche-Kelly medals?” We’re almost there I promise but first we need to talk about the medal itself.
Isavel Roche-Kelly won the 1980 and 1981 Comrades Marathons in 7:18:00 and 6:44:35 respectively. As such she was the first woman to run a silver medal time and break 7-hours at Comrades. Sadly, she was killed in a traffic accident not long after her second victory. The Isavel Roche-Kelly was introduced by Comrades in 2019 to recognise women who’d ‘just missed a top ten gold medal position’ as an equivalent to the Wally Hayward medal for men that was introduced in 2007. Female runners outside of the top ten who finished under 7h30 earned the medal (but I’ve yet to find an elite female athlete who thought that the time was correctly set). In 2024 the time was adjusted to 7h00.
READ MORE: Is Road Running Still (Unconsciously) Sexist?
After the 2025 event, there are 69 different women who’ve earned the medal. Eleven of these have earned three Isavel Roche-Kellys: Noora Honkala, Ramadimetja Lizzy Babili, Deanne Horn, Enie Manzini, Kate Rees, Yolande Maclean, Jenni Kruse, Fikile Mbuthuma, Helena Joubert, Jeannie Henderson and Carol Smith (Note: Honkala, Maclean and Joubert all overachieved and have also missed out by earning a gold medal between 2019 and 2025).
It’s taken about 3000 words to get here but I can confirm that four is the record and that there are just two ladies with four Isavel Roche-Kellys: Maretha Smit and Renata Vosloo. Neither has a Two Oceans silver yet but Renata does have a solitary silver at Comrades after running 7:19:46 this year.
This has got me wondering what the record is for the most sub-7h30 finishes is at Comrades without earning a silver medal but that is another question waiting to be answered and another article waiting to be written…
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I can personally testify that it is more difficult to obtain a 2 Oceans silver, than a Comrades silver. The reason being, that you need to be a much faster runner, in terms of minutes per km. However, you need to train hard if you want to have sufficient endurance to run 89km or so for a silver medal.
Very interesting article, I enjoyed reading it.