Two Oceans Marathon popular as ever

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The Two Oceans Marathon is one of the world’s most famous and popular annual sporting events. This year sees the 41st edition and should you have noticed a proliferation of earnest looking runners busily training in your suburb either at the crack of dawn or in the late afternoon, this event may well be why! It is hugely popular with Zimbabwean running enthusiasts, myself amongst them.

 

Cape Town also offers many lovely nature reserves, my favourite, the Cape Point Nature Reserve. Capetonians are renowned for their diligent commitment to their natural environment, which is home to many endemic species, particularly various fynbos flora found nowhere else on earth.

Running and cycling enjoy massive popularity in this city, and it was here that the Two Oceans Ultra Marathon was born in 1970 with just 26 entrants, 16 of whom finished by cut off. Taking the runners across the peninsular from one ocean to the other, it was to become dubbed “The World’s Most Beautiful Marathon” and it’s easy to see why.

That first gruelling 56km event was organised purely as a training run for runners who had set their sights on the very famous Comrades Ultra Marathon, held annually in May and launched 90 years ago in 1921 in honour of those who died in the First World War — a race not for the faint-hearted, at an eye-watering 90km, and every other year, uphill, to boot!

However, Two Oceans was soon to become a massively popular annual event, and remains so to this day, with the field growing every single year. It’s now an enormous event on the global running calendar, luring people from all over the planet, and is run as a well-oiled, efficient machine.

The more modestly distanced Two Oceans Half Marathon was launchedin 1998 and its popularity has actually overtaken that of the Ultra Marathon.  Though 21km might sound daunting to the uninitiated, this is a race for which training can more easily be slotted into the sort of manic working lives so many of us seem inevitably to lead. Of course, you don’t get to run from one ocean to another. However, the route is still very scenic.

The atmosphere is electric, with the phenomenal volumes of runners who gather at the start of this race and the ultra, creating a vast sea of humanity, all eager to achieve their own personal goals.

Last year’s half attracted record entries and this year, so fast did the 11 500 available entries get snapped up that after a quick feasibility study, the Two Oceans management added 2 000 extra places. These too were gleefully swooped upon and gobbled up in less than a fortnight, and if you visit the Two Oceans Facebook page, it is filled with the agonised messages of would-be Half Marathoners desperately trying to buy a place from any registered runner who might want to cancel.

I wasn’t really planning to do the Two Oceans Half this year (it would be my third), but when I discovered a friend who was prevented from joining me for the Half in 2008 by a sudden near fatal illness, had signed up this year, I couldn’t help myself.

My memories of Gillian languishing in hospital, delirious with raging fever and fighting for her life, including her frantic pleas to nurses and friends alike, to please, please, locate her running shoes and passport!

“Two Oceans!” she would cry, not even recognising us for a while. Thankfully she came back from the brink and is now feverishly training for her first Two Oceans Half!

Two Oceans is sponsored by Old Mutual and Puma.