Author: Modern Athlete

947 radio presenter Alex Caige was ready to take on his first Comrades Marathon this year, until a stress fracture put him out of action, but with a positive outlook on his recovery process, he’s ready to conquer more fitness goals. And Comrades 2016 is on the cards! – BY LAUREN VAN DER VYVER

MA: You’re big on the 947 cycle races, but when did Comrades become a pursuit you wanted to tick off?
Alex: My old man was doing Comrades back in 2012 and wanted me to try it. I’ve done cycle races with him, like the 947 road and mountain bike challenge as well as the Argus Cycle Tour, and it’s great having him with me, because it’s a distraction and motivation with the endurance stuff. Instead of joining him for Comrades then, I was doing the Fish River Canyon hike, so I outlined my first Comrades to be the 90th one. So in the middle of last year, I was getting my mindset right, because it’s an important part of the training journey.

MA: And then your stress fracture happened…
Alex: It happened when I picked up the distances in January, and I discovered it at my first marathon at Jackie Gibson. It was my qualifier, even though I knew it was notoriously tough, but beforehand, my friend I was training with kept forgetting to send me the route profile, so I thought, “How bad could it be?” Four and a half hours later I crossed the line, and that’s where I picked up the stress fracture in my leg. My muscles were fine, but I told my physio I felt a sharp pain inside my leg and she confirmed it. I got told that it would take between four and eight weeks to heal, but either way, my fitness would take a knock. I didn’t want to get to 54km at Comrades and then give in, and possibly with a long-term injury as well.

MA: You have to juggle radio with playing MC and being at events. Have you found a schedule to fit in training?
Alex: It’s difficult to balance everything. Sometimes I finish gigs at 2am, having to be up again at 4:30am. The hardest thing about Comrades is the commitment before the race, where you have to wake up early. It does become part of your routine, though, and it freshens you for the day – you appreciate it when you see this massive sunrise with streaks of gold. Time is a psychological thing. If you tell yourself it is or isn’t going to happen, that’s what it is going to be.

MA: Have you learnt to become mentally tough in the last stretches of an event?
Alex: It’s psychological. When you hit 65km at the 947 for example, you have to push through. You have to count down. I say to myself, “It’s just a training ride away,” and I map out my weekly rides into the race and that pulls me through. At Jackie Gibson, with 10km to go, I thought about my training runs during the week. I thought, “Oh, it’s a normal Tuesday night and I have to get this done.” You forget about that pain. My old man always tells me to stay positive and my mentality for training is what I bring to work. You have to believe for it to be a reality.

MA: Are you recovering well?
Alex: I went back to gym a few weeks ago to begin swimming and walking in the pool. I want to get my strength back. If you think about it, a fracture is technically a break – not a compound break, but it hurts! I will only try running again in July, starting with 3km to see how I feel. Then I want to build up slowly.

MA: Then is it back to the Comrades drawing board?
Alex: Cape Town Marathon is on the cards and I hope to build up my fitness before that. I will also be training intensely for the Cycle Challenge. Getting back into it, Comrades is obviously there. It’s the Ultimate Human Race. People think I’m crazy and say I should rather do Loskop, but I’m set. I’m a little worried about the Down Run, because of the impact Jackie Gibson had, but I have the mindset that I will do it. It’s about the vibe and challenge. Everyone should try it at least once.

At the age of 24, Rustenburg-born athlete Ilze Wicksell became the first woman from Africa to duck under two minutes in the 800m in 1983. In the same year, she also grabbed the 1000m national record, which still stands today, and now the Pretoria-based Tuks sports manager and high school athletics coach recalls her glory days as well as setbacks, and giving back to the sport she loves. – BY LAUREN VAN DER VYVER

Athletic success didn’t look to be part of Ilze’s future when she got to high school in the mid 70s, but then everything changed. “I was never a favourite to win anything growing up – I even failed to make my high school relay team – but one day, while I was running with my older brother up these mountains, his coach saw some talent in me and my training picked up,” says Ilze. Just a few months later she won her first inter-high 400m and 800m events, and then went on to compete in her first SA Junior Champs meet, where she placed second in the 800m. She never won a national junior title, always settling for the runners-up position, but that would change later in the senior ranks.

After her parents moved to Bloemfontein, Ilze decided to finish her schooling at Menlo Park High School in Pretoria, where she boarded with family friends, and then after school she moved back to Bloemfontein to study and to work with renowned coach De Villiers Lamprecht, who was certain of her ability to compete on a bigger stage. “It was an adjustment. As a student, I initially couldn’t make the 800m final, but in my second year, I performed better. My best then was a 2:07 finish, so I was never amongst the favourites going into nationals,” she explains. “Then I won the 800m at the 1979 SAs and cut my time to 2:03 and was selected for the Springbok squad as a reserve. I never thought I was as good as the others, but after that I knew I could be up there!”

From there, Ilze’s athletic career really took off. She won the 800m SA title again in 1980, 1981 and 1983, and added the 400m title in 1980 and 1981 as well, also improving her 800m time to 2:01 along the way. That brought increased public expectation to dip under the two-minute mark, which no African woman had done yet, even though the World Record had been 1:55 since 1976. Then in February 1983, after hard hours working on her speed, she clocked 2:37.20 in Bloemfontein to break the SA record for 1000m, beating Zola Budd by 0.7 seconds, and in March she finally broke the two-minute barrier in Stellenbosch when she stopped the clock on 1:59.39. “I remember working so hard for it, so it was special to be the first African woman to do that. But it was bittersweet, too. My father died two months before that, so when I crossed the line, I wanted to call him to tell him the news. Then I remembered I couldn’t, and I burst into tears.”

Out and Back
Because SA’s athletes were excluded from international competition in those years, Ilze decided that 1984 would be her last year in competitive athletics, because she could not see a long-term career in the sport, but she still wanted to break 1:57. So, in January that year she started her training earlier than before, determined to finish on a high note, until disaster struck. “I knew I was blessed with speed, and God gave me that talent, but one day on the track in Bloem a girl accidentally hit me on my Achilles with a discus. That was me out… I couldn’t run anymore!”

So Ilze went into teaching, then met and married American runner Ray Wicksell in 1988 when he came out to SA to compete, and a year later he convinced her to resume training after her first daughter Eugenie’s birth in 1989. “I couldn’t even run one kay after the baby! But the fact that I was running for Tuks and they gave me a little incentive to run for the club, helped me push on,” she says. Then in 1993, ten years after breaking two minutes and after seven years out of competitive running, Ilze won another 800m national title in 2:02. That took her to her first international competition at the African Champs in Mauritius at age 34, where she grabbed the bronze medal in the 800m. “After that I went to Germany to compete in a few meets, and I remember that because I ran barefoot and I was skinny, the international guys thought I was Zola Budd!” she recalls. “But my times stuck to 2:02, and it took me longer to recover, so I knew I had to slow down.”

Coaching the Future
After the birth of her youngest daughter Stephanie, Ilze returned to training and scored a win in the 800m at the World Veteran Champs in 1997. By then she knew that she would always be involved in athletics, and was working for Rentmeester Life Insurance, managing their Comrades Marathon runners, then became a manager and spokesperson for Liberty Nike Athletics Club in later years while working on developing young athletes in Atteridgeville and Eersterust in Pretoria. Then around 16 years ago, she started coaching middle distance at Menlo Park High School, and for the past eight years she has also been the manager of archery, badminton, canoeing, fencing, judo, rowing and wrestling at the Sports Centre at the University of Pretoria.

With both daughters also keen runners, having earned SA colours and competed at the World Youth Games, Ilze is happy to have brought them up in an active, healthy family environment, and she herself still runs a few times a week, because she says it keeps her mind in check while keeping her slim and healthy. She did try her hand at racing on the road some years back, but her body was no longer up to the challenge. “I thought I’d focus on 10km races, because I was not quick anymore, but my arthritis made it hard to walk properly, never mind run! That was my competitive days done.”

Today, Ilze is determined to carry on coaching and investing in talented young athletes, and wants to see sport become a priority in every student’s lifestyle. “As a coach, you’re a champ in my eyes if you set a goal and reach it. Sport translates to everything else in life – if you’re going to be a mother one day, a father, an employee – it determines who you will be.” Looking back on her running days, she says many things stand out as highlights: “That sub-2:00, beating Zola Budd to that 1000m record, my daughters and my family. My life is full because of that, and what sport has given me in all areas of my life.”

This year I was fortunate to make the trip down to Durban to support my third Comrades, and what a day it turned out to be! – BY RENE KALMER

I made the trip down with Andre, my now fiancée, his sister René, my best friend since kindergarten, her husband Francois, and my soon to be father-in-law, Oom Nicky. To be honest, I was not really confident in ‘Team van Wyk's’ ability to finish Comrades this year, because Andre was admitted to hospital two weeks prior to Comrades with a gall bladder infection and was just planning to start the race for the experience, while René had been battling with chronic ITB for the past year and Francois was also nursing a knee injury. I was not looking forward to an awkward trip back home with no medals…

Ready for Action
Race day arrived and it was time to strap René's knees with the help of a homemade video by my friend Magdaleen, who had earlier also suffered with ITB. René was desperate to try anything to help her get further than last year’s 50km. Then I shared the emotions and excitement with all 17,000 runners who were brave enough to start the Ultimate Human Race. What I love best about the Up run is the opportunity to experience the start in Durban, and I can't even imagine the emotions going through the runners’ minds as they play Chariots of Fire.

Our first stop was Pinetown and it was the only time we managed to spot and support all the runners, from the leaders to Andre, who was taking a backseat in Vlam's Modern Athlete 12-hour bus. Next stop was Drummond for the halfway mark, where we waited in anticipation for our troopers. René and Francois came through all smiles, while Andre snuck through halfway just under the cut-off time and was determined to keep going.

Keeping Track
I was really happy for social media and all my friends back home in front of the TV, giving me updates on how well the South Africans were doing, especially Caroline W?stmann. I met her in 2012 at the Midrand Striders prize-giving, where she was the star of the evening after placing 15th at Comrades that year, and I knew she was destined for great things! We have been friends ever since and it is always great to catch up with her at races and see how her joy for running rubs off on everybody around her.

Caroline proved everybody wrong on race day. She won the Old Mutual Two Oceans Marathon just seven weeks prior to Comrades, and according to the experts she would fade, and she took the lead too soon, then caused everybody watching to choke for breath when she started to walk, but Caroline was just sticking to what worked for her in the past. She made Comrades look like a walk in the park, finishing in an astonishing 25th place overall, after Gift Kelehe had won the men's race by more than seven minutes – the first time since 1992 that South Africans claimed both the men’s and women's titles. I was also thrilled to hear that Charne Bosman finished second, after her disappointing run last year when thyroid problems forced her to stop. These golden girls, along with Emmerentia Rautenbach and Yolande Maclean, really showed that South African ladies can run!

Chasing Medals
Back to the sub-12 bus, and René and Francois cruised through Cato Ridge, Lion Park and Polly Shorts, with René’s smile just growing bigger as they got closer to Pietermaritzburg. Unfortunately, I could not say the same about Andre, but I think the fact that René was about to finish her first Comrades helped him to dig deep and complete the race. I know our primary school coach, Juffrou Maggie, will be very proud of the two of them, as her motto was, “No guts, no glory, no pain, no gain.”

PS: Wedding Bells!
The Modern Athlete team is thrilled to congratulate René and Andre on their engagement, announced just over a week after the Comrades. All the best for you two, and many happy miles together!