Date: 23 July 2022
Distance: 5km
Time: 30:16 (Gerry, 30:50, even though we finished together)

On a visit to my homeland, we decided to do one of the local parkruns in Bloemfontein, the town I grew up in.

With the Comrades marathon – the pinnacle of South African road running (an 89km run between Durban and Pietermaritzburg, alternating the starting town from year to year) – being the largest and oldest on-road ultra in the world, the whole running calendar is geared towards getting about 15,000 (or 23,961 on the race’s 75 anniversary in 2000) participants thought the course in 12 hours every year. Some interesting facts about the race was published in Runner’s World.

This is a country with a lot of focus (unofficially) on running – a lot of people run (a small event would draw 1000 participants), and when we were still living here, a 6min/km pace would place one in the middle of the pack. In New Zealand, you can easily be last with a 6min/km pace. But things are changing, and with more people taking up the sport, the focus is increasingly more on participation, even in New Zealand.

In terms of parkrun, there are 206 parkruns in South Africa. The SA male and female parkrun records are 14:02 and 16:35 respectively, compared to NZ at 14:26 and 16:23. A faster male time in SA and a faster female time in NZ.

The Inibos parkrun is one of three parkruns in Bloemfontein, capital of the Free State province. In summer it takes place every Saturday at 7:00am (October – March) and in winter at 8:00am (April – September). Although parkrun is usually at 8am around the world, I guess an earlier start is granted in semi-arid and desert-type countries where the temperatures may pose problems in terms of heat exhaustion and sun stroke. It was quite a change moving to NZ where events rarely starts before 8am, when we were used to start at 6am and be finished with a 21k run by 8:00. Also, in summertime SA events would often start at 5am.

Inibos (a colloquialism for what would roughly translate to ‘in the bush’) is a private playground for runners, walkers, MTBers, kids’ quad bike rides, airsoft, and other adventures, with a picnic area and coffee shop. The course is run on gravel roads and single track trails. It is a double lapper of 2.5km with just a small uphill stretch in the middle of each lap. The familiar dead, yellow winter grass, dusty tracks, eucalyptus and other indigenous trees, not to mentioned prickly weeds that get into socks and shoes and eventually skin, bring back good memories of our running beginnings some twenty-plus years ago.

We started near the back, and soon had to pass some walkers and slower runners. Since we ran some twists and loops, we could see the runners ahead and behind us. The ground was uneven, solid and dusty, making it hand to just tune out and run.

We were going at a reasonable clip despite the fact that we’re running at 1500 metre altitude. Add to that my current ‘fitness level’ (or rather lack of fitness), and I was huffing and puffing like and old steam engine. But without totally killing myself I could manage a 6 min/km pace.

At the little hump at the finish where the volunteers recorded our time, the one lady edged me on to run quick and not let the men ‘beat us women’. I assumed she was referring to Gerry who was right behind me. On the clock on the wall I saw that my time was a bit over thirty minutes which is not flash, but I was happy to be able to achieve that. When the results came out, big was my surprise to be the first female (haha) and 13th overall out of 99 runners. This parkrun is perhaps more focussed on getting out and being social than running at speed, the way parkrun is intended to be.

We didn’t stay for any social activities afterwards as we didn’t want to be away from the family for longer than needed. It’s been seven years since we last made a trip to South Africa, making our long-overdue family time precious.

Perhaps next week we’ll try a different one.