The Running Mann’s Guide to December 2025 Marathons

This article provides detailed information on all South Africa’s December 2025 marathons including race descriptions and recommendations. You can find the full 2025 marathon / ultra calendar here.

A summary of your choices is below:

Managed to get a Comrades entry or scored a Two Oceans ballot entry and still need to qualify? Or even just want to put a down payment on your Christmas dinner (and work off some of the festive excesses)? Then a December marathon is a must do way to see out the year.

It’s the busiest December ever on the South African road calendar with six confirmed options. First out of the starting blocks is the Nelson Mandela Bay 1City Marathon which starts and finishes at the Fairview horse racing track. This is a fairly flat marathon with a second half that has been favourably compared to running around Benoni.

Your second choice that weekend is the Sedibeng Marathon which returns after a gap year in 2024. This is a flat, double lap course in the Vaal Triangle amongst steel smelting plants, petro-chemical factories, coal fired power stations and electricity pylons. Vereeniging is all smoke and no mirrors but it does have its own charm.

My pick of the month is a township marathon that makes Soweto look positively flat. Mdantsane, just outside East London, is known as South Africa’s boxing mecca and this is a route that pulls no punches. You’ll need to bob and weave through the rolling hills and make sure that the haymaker of a hill after the Bridle Drift Dam doesn’t floor you before halfway. From there it is a series of continual japs and testing uppercuts. With the showboating over, the real work starts at 24km with a 7km section split into three big hills – a virtual Tyson Special (Lead Hook – Rear Uppercut – Lead Hook). If you haven’t thrown in the towel after this ruthless combination of hills, you’ve still got 11km of probing uppercuts before the final bell sounds including a particularly nasty body blow at 36km and one final sucker punch just before the finish.

The Day of Reconciliation on the 16^th offers the inaugural City60 ultra which is a single lap 60km around Pretoria with Ton Jenkins Drive thrown in for fun towards the end as well as the Madiba’s Last Route Marathon in Mthatha. The latter was formerly known as the Heroes Marathon and is a friendly, relaxed, point-to-point race from Mthatha airport to Qunu (pronounced [ˈk͡ǃuːnu]) – which is where Nelson Mandela grew up and is buried. The race route traces some of the steps the great man walked in the past.

The final option is the Nzhelele Valley Marathon which is about 30 minutes from Louis Trichardt in northern Limpopo. With the race being held on 27 December, you can treat yourself to one last marathon for the year and your spouse/partner to a romantic weekend in Louis Trichardt (which is what I did in 2023). The route is undulating with a few good hills, starting from the township and taking one deep into the countryside where you can admire the natural beauty of the Nzhelele Valley. River views and indigenous baobab trees along the route give the race a natural breath of clean air.

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