For many with legs firm and toned from countless carefully logged miles under sun and over sand the Rhodes Run cut-off of four-and-a-half-hours at twenty-one-kilometres is as pedestrian as reading this when typed without using digits.
After all, back in the day when plimsolls ruled the road the slowest 26 mile, 42.2km for our metric readers, qualifying times for those epic South African tar runs were set at 4:15 and 4:30. And everyone managed those.
Yet here is a quirky event in a remote corner with a four-and-a-half-hour cut-off at twenty-one-kilometres. And seemingly no-one can run a sub-two-hour.
Bizarre.
Typo? Altitude error?
There is even an 'award' for the first runner who reaches the check point on the wrong side of 4½ hours. A memento. A blanket. Apparently for warmth, but whispers are that it is to hide and soak up tears.
A second cursory glance, this time at the route profile, reveals only one hill. Well a few undulations, but only one trifling bump. And the Route Director has the temerity to refer to it as a 'conversation stopper', a phrase apparently taken from his pre-dawn training runs in Westville with a blind runner, but we digress.
Perspective. Always a good thing is perspective.
No more cursory glances, time to delve into this aberration of time and distance.
History reveals perspective. Over the past 29 years that check point has been used 27 times. On two occasions severe snowfalls kept the route, and the runners, in the snow crusted valley. Of those 27 years only four runners have reached that check point in under two hours. Only four! And one super-being, Dirkie Moolman, achieved the feat on two occasions. Dirkie holds the best time to reach the Mavis Top check point, for that is how she is referred to in polite company, of 1:53. Pedestrian by conventional tar standards, but in the hills under Ben MacDhui it is a best time that has stood since 1995 at the seventh edition of the event and we sit on the cusp of the 30th.
The second-best time was set by Jannie le Roux in 1991. He went on to win that year by almost 30 minutes having crested Mavis in 1:57 and a few pennies and was back in the village in under 4 hours. He was stepping out of his shower and many had not reached the top of Mavis.
Jannie recorded three wins at Rhodes. Interestingly his sequence broken by names well known at that longer run commemorating soldiers of the Great War. Taking line honours in 1991 and again in 1992 Jannie deferred, as did the entire field, to Deon Holtzhausen who took the win in 1993. Jannie reclaimed the title in 1994 with Charl Mattheus taking the honours in 1995.
Jannie runs with the prestigious mauve Snowflake No 47 and will be heading out for his 22nd Rhodes Run on 7 July.
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| Jannie's mauve Snowflake number |
We have digressed. Back to that pedestrian twenty-one.
Somewhere between the village and the Mavis Top check point, admittedly hidden in a swirl of murky myth and legend, lies an incline. An incline that apparently brings out fierce naval language. Language which drifts down to the Kloppershoekspruit and, so we are told, is best left in the valley.
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| 'Klippies' overnighting in the Kloppershoek kloof and their first customers | |
There was a time when the 'Klippies' from St Dominic's Priory School (Port Elizabeth) set up camp in the kloof and provided a brief respite. Now rest breaks before reaching the check point are optional, but seemingly mandatory. Always useful to point a lens at some far-off object, it gives the rest a degree of purpose, and dignity.
Perspective.
If Comrades gold medallists 'Waltzing' Dave Wright, Deon Holtzhausen, Charl Mattheus, Sarel Ackerman and Johan Oosthuizen did not dip under 2 hours on their way to a win or top ten finish at Rhodes then maybe that pedestrian 4½ is not so pedestrian after all.
It would seem that at her kindest, Mavis is unfriendly.
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| Jannie le Roux | |
| Having set new best times for Mavis Top & overall - 1991 | Hooggenoeg Ridge - 2016 |
