Due to the meaning of the word “comrades”, the famous South African ultra-marathon with this name has produced thousands of goosebump moments over the years.
The way in which fellow runners suffer together and support each other along the long route of almost 90km, brings out the true meaning of the word “comrades”. But nothing compares to the emotion when those athletes who have suffered together along the route, finally cross the finish line together.
This year’s Comrades marathon once again produced its quota of drama and emotion, but for three runners from different clubs in Pretoria this race happened to coincidentally ended in such a way that they will remember it together for a long time.
Dr. Louis Day, principal of Laerskool Constantia Park and member of the Magnolia athletics club and Haroon Abramjee, businessman from Laudium and member of the Jacaranda Athletics Club, developed a friendship over time during several races.
Day and Abramjee are both Comrades veterans with the former who earned his double green number this year by completing his 20th Comrades marathon. Abramjee tackled his 17th Comrades, having missed out on last year’s race due to injury after a serious car accident.
“I first met Haroon a few years ago on the road during the Pretoria Marathon, when we started talking while running. He and some of his club mates, all Indians, impressed me with the ease with which they spoke to me in perfect Afrikaans,” Day told Rekord.
The Pretoria Marathon’s route goes over Fort Klapperkop twice and according to Day just before the second round, he was invited by Abramjee and some of his club mates to take a break before they tackled the steep route over Klapperkop for the second time.
“To my surprise, this ‘break’ included delicious cold ice-cream, conjured up by their support team from a car trunk on the side of the road,” said Day.
Since then, Day and Abramjee have become great friends and often ran together during official races.
“Shortly before this year’s Comrades, I passed him one morning on the way to work when he was training in Rigel-avenue and we wished each other good luck for the upcoming race,” Day said.
The third athlete in this remarkable story is Marli van Vuuren from the Phobians Athletic Club. She and Day got to know each other when she was a resident of the school’s dormitory as a pupil of Hoërskool Waterkloof. Day, who was still attached to this school as a teacher at the time, was also the head of the dormitory.
“I ran my second Comrades marathon this year. Haroon and I were both struggling at Polly Shorts and, although we didn’t know each other, we started talking to encourage each other,” said Van Vuuren when Rekord spoke to her.
So it happened that Abramjee and Van Vuuren ran into Day about a kilometre before the end of the race. He was also struggling after Polly Shorts.
Day and Van Vuuren realized they knew each other and so the three athletes jogged the last few hundred meters together, while they had a lot to talk about.
For all three of them, this fortuitous confluence of circumstances was an experience that made this year’s Comrades very special and one to remember for a long time.
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