Back when the Comrades Marathon was transitioning from a mere athletic fixture into a massive social event, there was plenty of “conventional wisdom” that the person who could finish the punishing Durban to Pietermaritzburg route would never come from the ranks of track specialists.
Then, many runners believed in the “LSD” mantra – long, slow distance – where any form of speed training was pooh-poohed.
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“Fast” people would burn themselves out long before the end of Comrades’ 90 punishing kilometres, the theory went.
Yesterday, former track specialist George Kusche put the nails in the coffin of that myth by obliterating the course record in the up run.
He specialised as a 1 500m runner on the collegiate circuit while studying in the US after leaving high school, switching to road running a few years ago.
Women’s race winner Gerda Steyn was never a track specialist, or even a runner in her early years, taking up the sport only in 2014… but she has speed, too, with a SA record time in the standard marathon as well as records in the Two Oceans Marathon.
Only a few weeks ago, a sub-two-hour standard marathon looked impossible. Will we one day see an under-five-hour Comrades?