Out of the lockdown have come many impressive physical feats and challenges accomplished.
One of those belongs to Melville resident and Randburg Harriers runner, Ulrike Karg, who has run more than 395km in circles in the same room since the lockdown started.
This included a marathon-distance 42km run on 26 April, run in dedication to Karg’s father, who is undergoing chemotherapy treatment.
The room Karg ran in is roughly the size of a double garage and doing circles in it for so long was no easy feat. But running has a special significance for someone who overcame a serious injury.
“I wanted to run my first Comrades Marathon in 2017 but I broke my ankle and tore several ligaments in my foot six weeks before the race on a trail run,” she explained.
“Everyone said I would never run like I used to, but I proved them wrong and came back much stronger with the help of my club, Randburg Harriers, and a social running group I run with called Tyrone Harriers.”
In fact, Karg has calculated that she has run more than 1 333km since the year started. Much of this was at races and club runs.
Karg aimed to do her first Comrades Marathon this year, and hoped it will still happen, since the run was postponed. However, she has not allowed the lockdown to stop her training.
“I tried to simulate my normal training just in a different location and ended up with 395km in the stage five lockdown period. That is actually much more than I would do normally. I also have a spinning bike at home. I would do one-hour resistance training on that every day too.
“The running alone added up to between 8km and 16km per day, with Karg changing direction every few minutes. My biggest challenge was having a really strong mind and I had to adapt my running style completely to be able get a bit of speed going in such a tiny space.”
