Running races in South Africa have become increasingly popular. If you don’t arrive at sparrow’s fart before a race, be warned about getting stuck in gridlocked traffic! This was us at Johnson Crane in January. Added to that is taking over 20 minutes to cross the timing mat at the start of the race, like majority of suckers at Vaal marathon. 

Is it due to health trends hitting our media that people suddenly want to run? Could Parkrun have ignited newbie runners into challenging themselves to run further than 5kms? Or have other events such as Crossfit, Bootcamp or Warrior have added to the flow of budding athletes trying their skill on tar? Whatever it is, it’s fantastic! Running is a reasonably cheap sport (that’s before you think you need a GPS watch to upload your runs to Strava) and you don’t need to run official races to enjoy yourself. 

YouTube is loaded with free coaching and it would appear that people are catching on to this. Don’t believe me? Check out Cape Town’s promenade. Or head to Jo’burg’s highway aka Westcliff stairs. Packed! 

In between the ever growing numbers of runners are everyday people like you & me. The average Joe who will never run an ultra like Comrades; the casual half marathoner who dreams of full marathons; the 10km social guy and yes, all the really fun runners at the back! It’s a mixed batch and we’re all in it having fun together. 

Let’s keep running!