Category: Marathons

All posts and race reports from standard marathons.

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(Digging deep at) The Big Hole Marathon

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[Marathon #293 / Unique Marathon #180 / 22 November 2025]

It had been a while since I’d travelled to Kimberley but the addition of the Diamonds & Dorings Kimberley Big Hole Marathon to the race calendar necessitated a return to the flatlands of the Northern Cape. The Northern Cape is by far the least populated province in South Africa and marathons in the region are similarly sparse. This is perhaps best highlighted with the stat that only 96 people used a Northern Cape marathon as their Comrades qualifier in 2025.

Just 96 entrants used a Northern Cape marathon as their Comrades qualifier in 2025.
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Steyn City Ultra Trail (dusting up my road shoes)

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[Marathon #314 / Unique Marathon #190 / Ultra #87 / 11 July 2026]

With Comrades behind me and the very expensive mandatory gear I’d bought to run the Otter Trail in 2025 gathering dust in my cupboard, I gratefully accepted an invite to come and run the Steyn City Ultra Trail in July, opting for the longest possible distance of 53km (there are also 21km, 15km and 7.5km options).

It would be inappropriate for me to use the cliched saying that “it was time to dust off my trail shoes” because I don’t own any. More appropriate for me when running trail in the cold, dry highveld winter was that “it was time to dust up my road shoes”.

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Red Star Raceway Marathon (Racing on a one-stop strategy)

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[Marathon #289 / Unique Marathon #178 / 11 October 2025]

The Red Star Marathon is 11-and-a-bit laps around the Red Star Raceway just outside Delmas alongside the N12 highway. The race was started in 2023 and I had successfully avoided running it for two years. However, there was just one marathon in the whole of South Africa on the second weekend of October which naturally led to Julian and I making the short 45-minute drive just across the Mpumalanga provincial border line to rev our motors.

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Northridge Mall Marathon (Where the streets have strange names)

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[Marathon #292 / Unique Marathon #179 / 15 November 2025]

There are two trends I’ve found when running Bloemfontein marathons:

  1. I return home a lot more tweetalig than when I departed (and have tried to channel some of this bilingualism into this race report) .
  2. Things don’t just happen in Bloemfontein, you have to make them happen (or, failing that, you have to be very observant to spot the cultural nuances and intricacies).
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False Bay 50: Ranking the weather

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Where does the 2026 False Bay 50 rank in terms of bad weather runs? Having 309 previous marathons as a point of comparison, I’ve run a few where it’s rained more and rained harder but that is definitely the strongest wind I’ve ever encountered.

This video sums up the 2026 False Bay 50 weather conditions pretty well: Welcome to the wonderful world of ultra marathon running Coralee Barnes (with David Case on “windbreaker” duties).
Video courtesy of Eleanor Talbot.

The only marathon I’ve done that rivals False Bay 2026 was back in 2008 when I was in the USA for work and ran a double-lapper around an air force base in Warner Robins, Georgia. As such it was exposed to the elements. The first-lap was great – perfect running conditions. I ran an 87 minute split and thought I would cruise around for a comfortable sub-3.

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Barberton Makhonjwa Mountain Marathon (The School of Rock)

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[Marathon #286 / Unique Marathon #176 / 13 September 2025]

After travelling all over the country to get my marathon fixes, it’s good to know that there are still a few marathons that can take one’s breath away – both literally and figuratively. However, I was not expecting Barberton to be that place. It is a town I had never visited and I might never have found my way to the eastern extremities of South Africa if they did not host a marathon.

A breathtaking sunrise from my accommodation near the start, the hills to follow would quite literally take my breath away again later in the day.
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