EDITOR – On Sunday, March 9, history repeated itself. Once again cars were at a standstill while runners crossed the intersection in Edenvale and St John roads, at about 7.30am.
The men in charge of the robots stood in the middle of the traffic with little red flags not allowing the traffic to go through.
They were not traffic officers only some poor young person who were yelled at shown the finger.
Motorists hooted and walked to the men with no avail.
People needed to get to work and church and so on.
Eventually the right lane people pushed through did a U turn and went back past Makro but these runners were everywhere, with no traffic officers to help only young people who do not have any experience with rules of the road.
Later when I returned that way about 9.30am they had an officer there.
I have checked in back newspapers about two weeks and did not see any advertisements about this race.
Once again the public had to sit and wait for these runners to move but the gaps were few and far between.
REALLY ANNOYED
GERMISTON
Letter received March 12.
Letter Unedited.
EDITOR’S COMMENT – Marietta Lombard, Editor for the Bedfordview and Edenvale NEWS, commented as follows:
The NEWS published numerous articles on the Sarens Edenvale Marathon starting from October, 2013.
In 2014 alone, the race was featured in six of the NEWS’ 11 issues, including every week in February and the week of the race.
Mr Simon Hart, from the Edenvale Rand Road Warriors, commented as follows:
We would like to apologies for the inconvenienced caused by the staging of our marathon on Sunday, March 9.
We endeavoured to warn the residents of Edenvale of the marathon and the potential traffic disruptions.
We sent an e-mail to all of the resident associations and most of the churches, four weeks prior and then again two weeks prior to the event.
We also had an article in the Bedfordview and Edenvale News on a weekly basis for four weeks prior to the event.
The intersection in question had been identified as a potential problem as it is a busy intersection.
We have to take extra care at this intersection for the safety of the runners.
That is why we positioned four marshals, all experienced runners and marshals along with four Metro Police officers, to control the traffic and the runners.
We hosted a successful marathon on March 9, which by all accounts surpassed the marathon we hosted last year on March 10.
We have organised this race for the last 20 years in Edenvale.
Our club is proud to hail from this wonderful town in Gauteng, which is one of the reasons we renamed the race to the Sarens Edenvale Marathon.
Our marathon is also a qualifying marathon for the Two Oceans and Comrades Marathons.
Last year our marathon raised over R100 000 for the three charities, namely Little Eden, which I would like to remind you has been a part of Edenvale for many years and does wonderful work by caring for persons with mental disabilities.
Another charity we supported last year was Reach for a Dream, again a really great charity doing wonderful work with children who are terminally ill.
Our last charity last year was a really great organisation called KidneyBeanz, who help children with renal and liver illnesses.
They provide the support for these children such as physiotherapy and dieticians as most of them cannot afford these services on top of the huge medical bills they encounter, just to stay alive.
This year we elected to help our three main charities and a further two charities to a lesser degree, one of which is Tannah’s Gift, which looks at children who are born with cleft palates and raises funds to pay for the corrective surgery.
Our last charity we are supporting is the brain-child of Mr Harry Karamichael of the Karaglen Spar, called Tiles 4 Change.
We hope to raise much more, much-needed funds this year.
It seems that a lot more Edenvale residents have the same generosity as the 500 who did last year’s fun run; this year that number went up to 700.
Again, we would like to apologise for the inconvenience we caused as you were on your way to church. We urge you to diarise, March 8, 2015, as this race will happen again.
