Author: Modern Athlete

Having experienced both elation and disappointment in her 2014 season, SA’s top female 400m hurdler, Wenda Theron-Nel, is getting herself ready for World Champs in 2015, Olympics in 2016 and hopefully a long-awaited new SA record. – BY LAUREN VAN DER VYVER

Things didn’t go as well as Wenda hoped at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow earlier this year. Having broken her 400m in May in Potchefstroom, going from 53.41 seconds to 52.53, and then bettering her 400m hurdles PB from 55.36 to 54.82 in June in Marrakesh, she went to Scotland full of confidence in her speed and form. However, having made the final of the hurdles, she was disqualified for a technical infringement – but the Pretoria-based speedster bounced straight back from that disappointment to win gold at the African Championships in Marrakesh just a week later, in a time of 55.32.

“Winning was such a surprise after not doing as well as I wanted at the Games. I went to Morocco with no expectations. I just wanted to have fun, but came away with a win. It was my year’s highlight!” says Wenda, but then adds, “I’m driven by my passion for the sport. Medals are great, but when they become greater than the passion, then it’s time to stop. Instead, you train for that one out of ten race that goes perfectly – the pattern, hitting the hurdles seamlessly and everything clicking…” And judging by her times and results, she had that a few times this year!

Natural Speed

Born and raised in Worcester in the Cape, Wenda was always impressing at athletics days at school, starting with 50m sprints as a youngster and also taking part in hurdles and the long jump. It was only after school, when she moved to the capital to study Dietetics at the University of Pretoria, that she turned her focus to the 400m hurdles and found that it clicked. Having completed her studies and gotten married to Jacques in 2012, she now works half days so that she can pursue her dream of qualifying for the 2016 Olympics in Rio.

“It’s any athlete’s dream to be at the Olympics, and it is up to me to take it further. After every year, it becomes a bigger possibility, and I’m blessed to have great support,” explains Wenda. “My husband gets it. He is a triathlete and has run Comrades, so he understands the love. There is no issue getting up early because training comes first.” Her family has also been a consistent support in her career. “They’re proud of me and win or lose, they’re there. My coach Hennie Kotze, who I’ve been with for four years, is also important to my success. I work hard, but it’s his encouragement and programme that’s pushed me.”

All Passion

Currently busy with off-season training, for the next three months Wenda will get back to basics at the High Performance Centre in Pretoria, mixing hill sessions and stairs, for strength and power, with track training twice a week to get her fitness up for the coming season. She also mixes it up with spinning and kickboxing in the off-season. Come February, Wenda will focus a little more on technique and speed, adding tyre-pulling sessions with shorter sprints to work on her sharpness. “Right now, the volume is pushed up, but it’s not as intensive. We do group circuit training and I gym on my own twice a week and on the weekends. With my work hours so flexible, I can arrange when I train,” she says.

“Also, being in dietetics, it’s easier to stay healthy, and with World Champs coming up in Beijing next year, it’s ideal to keep your race weight in check. I want to make the final at World Champs – in 2011 I made the semis, and I want to go one better – so that is my goal, and then on to Rio 2016!” Another goal the three-time SA champion and All Africa Games silver medallist in 2011 says she hopes to achieve this coming season is to challenge Myrtle Bothma’s long-standing 1986 SA record of 53.47. “I have to drop a second off my time, but I think I can do it!”

With seven kays to go in this year’s Otter African Trail marathon, Iain Don-Wauchope rolled his ankle and thought he had blown his chances of a third win, but he fought back and showed once again why he is one of SA’s finest trail runners. – BY SEAN FALCONER

Right from the start, the 2014 Otter was a three-way tussle between Iain, Madiba and AJ Calitz, Thabang put in a surge that dropped AJ, and when Iain hurt his ankle, the Gauteng flyer looked favourite to win. However, Iain was not done yet. “When I rolled the ankle I told Thabang to go and he immediately put in another surge. I thought he was gone, so I even stopped for water, but I think he burnt himself out a bit, and when I popped out onto the rocks with just two kays to go, I saw him just ahead and passed him walking on the rocks.”

Iain crossed the line in a new course record 4:21:30 for the west-to-east RETTO route, the ‘Reverse Otter’ run every second year, having pulled nearly three minutes clear of Thabang (4:24:27), and AJ clocked 4:31:17 for third. “Catching Thabang was actually a bit of luck, and I certainly thought AJ was the man to beat this year, but I think he had already expended so much energy pre-race because the focus was on him,” says Iain. “Perhaps if I lived in the Cape and did more events, instead of living in the Drakensberg Mountains like a Hillbilly, I would get more media exposure, but I think it works in my favour – no big sponsors, no media attention, no pressure. Even though I have now won it three times, next year the focus will probably once again be on AJ, Thabang or Lucky Miya, but that suits me.”

Under the Radar

It is actually surprising that Iain (39) doesn’t enjoy as much media attention, because he boasts a mightily impressive sporting CV. In trail running, he has not only won the Otter three times, but has also won the ProNutro AfricanX Trailrun twice in tandem with his wife Susan, plus has two wins each in the Skyrun, Rhodes Ultra, Southern Storm and Mast Challenge, and has twice been selected to represent SA at the World Trail Running Champs. In multi-sport, he won the Western Province Duathlon Champs title in his age group in 2004, then the SA Champs title as well, and qualified for the World Duathlon Champs, and he’s also won the multi-discipline Totalsports Challenge, been part of the winning team at the Bull of Africa adventure race, and posted numerous wins in the Jeep, Mudman and Teavigo series.

In 2004, Iain admits he made a costly mistake when he raced the Half Ironman in somebody else’s number. “I raced without really knowing what I was doing, even borrowed a bike that was the wrong size, but then I finished 12^th overall and second South African after Raynard Tissink! I never dreamt I would finish that high, so I had to admit to the organisers I was not legally entered, and they gave me a two-year ban from all Ironman events. The next day Mark Smith of GU invited me to join a team with Raynard to compete around the world in Ironman events, but I was now banned! That could have sent my career in a very different direction, and it was a very stupid thing to do.”

Talent spotted

Iain grew up on a farm outside Greytown in KwaZulu-Natal, until the family moved to the central Drakensberg and established the Mountain Splendour Eco-Resort near Winterton. In 1993, while running cross country in his final school year at Maritzburg College, he was spotted by a talent scout and offered an athletics scholarship to Western Kentucky University in the USA, where he completed a B.Sc. Civil Engineering, Cum Laude. “I was torn, because I really wanted to go to Stellenbosch University, where many of my mates were going, but many people said I should take the opportunity. With hindsight, I would have loved to spend my first year or two of varsity in Stellenbosch, then go to the States when I was emotionally and physically stronger, because the American way of ‘more is better’ saw us doing 100 miles a week in training. We were basically doing marathon training for cross-country, and it burnt me out.”

Upon his return to SA in 2001, after five years in the States and two years backpacking the world, Iain also completed a Masters in Environmental Management at the University of Cape Town before taking over the family business in 2005. He married Su in 2007 and they now have two young children, but while all that was happening, he took a break from competitive running. “When I came back I got into mountain biking, adventure racing, swimming, paddling, duathlon and triathlon, and it took me many years to focus on running again. Now I believe in more speed work and rest than doing high mileage. I actually do very little training these days, only about 60km a week, but people don’t believe me when I explain how little I did before Otter. I think the key was being undertrained, arriving at the race without any expectations.”

Something New to Try

Looking ahead, Iain says his plans for 2015 include running AfricanX again with Su and defending his Otter title, and if the dates work out, he would love to give the Table Mountain Challenge and Cape Ultra Trail events in Cape Town a go. Looking abroad, Iain hopes to once again be selected for the SA team for either the World Long Distance Trail Champs or the later World Marathon Trail Champs, but he also has a few obstacles he’d like to get over during the year. You see, just after his Otter win, Iain decided to try obstacle racing for the first time at the Impi Challenge Gauteng – and promptly won it!

“I felt like a kid on the farm again, just having fun, but it was a relatively easy course. Then came the Stellenbosch Impi, featuring a lot more running, which suited me, but the obstacles were also tougher, especially carrying a concrete block, and that allowed Stuart Marais to pull away for the win. I felt a bit jaded on the day, but now I am really excited to do more obstacle events. However, I think I will stick to the Impi, because to do the Warrior you need to put yourself in the gym five days a week. The Spartan series is also coming to SA, so I will look which events suit me best, with more focus on running and less on strength.”

The New Year is set to bring a new challenge for Olympic marathoner Tanith Maxwell when she steps up to ultra-marathons for the first time, but she says she is looking forward to this new chapter in her running career.   – BY SEAN FALCONER

Having run a best time of 2:32:33 represented South Africa in the marathon at the Olympics, Games and World Champs since 2006, as well as featured in many ‘Big City’ marathons as well, Tanith says the time is now right for her to step up in distance. “I think I need a new goal, to try something else, so the Two Oceans ultra will be my focus for 2015, and everything is geared towards that,” says the 38-year-old Durbanite.

“I don’t think my marathon career is over, but I have changed my training and diet to go longer. I have been invited to run the Dubai Marathon in January and I will use that a springboard into Oceans, because I think a good marathon athlete can hold on for the 56km of Oceans. I keep getting asked about Rio 2016 and the next Olympic Marathon, and I won’t write it off totally, but it won’t be my focus. My whole career has been centred on representing SA and qualifying to do so, and now I’m looking for a new challenge.”

FAMILY OF RUNNERS

Tanith developed a love for running from a young age thanks to her parents’ participation in the Comrades – Dad Brian ran it 11 times while Mom Jenny has three Big C medals. “After helping to second my parents at Comrades I became fascinated by distance training, and I started running at the age of seven when my school hosted a 5km fun run, which my dad ran with me,” says Tanith. “In the same year, my Mom’s cousin from the Free State, Kevin Flanegan, came down to Durban for the 1983 SA Marathon Champs and won it. I was at the finish and this left a big impression on me. He bought me my first pair of running shoes and helped me with training advice, and my first 10km was in Durban in 1988, the L’Oréal Femina Ladies Race. We started on the Kings Park athletics track, and I remember bolting out, then dying on the beachfront section and finishing looking the worse for wear, but I eventually got the hang of pacing.”

Meanwhile, the family began moving around quite a lot as Tanith’s parents explored work opportunities overseas, going over to the UK four times as well as stopping off in New Zealand and Canada. “Dad’s a vet and Mom is a histologist, so both could find work. They tend not to stay in one place too long, but have been back from the UK now for six years.” Tanith, who works part-time in her mother’s practice in Durban, initially studied at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, then transferred to Stellenbosch University, where she completed her B.Sc Sport Science degree. “My folks had relocated to the Cape, and I was desperate to try out the competitive athletics scene down there, so I moved down and joined Johan Fourie’s training group. That’s where my running really clicked.”

STEPPING IT UP

Tanith rapidly improved from a 1:30 half marathon PB to finish second in the 1997 Gun Run Half Marathon with a vastly improved 1:19. “I was very chuffed with my time, but I still had no ambitions to become a full-time runner. That came a bit later when I was invited to join the Liberty-Nike team and they sent me to run the 2003 Voet van Afrika Half, where I dipped under 1:17. That led to my selection for the 2004 Southern Region Half Champs in Mauritius, my first time representing SA, and I finished second.

Later that year Tanith ran her first marathon, when visiting her folks in the UK. “I got my folks to enter me in the Edinburgh Marathon and just ran it for fun, but then I finished second in 2:47, although I suffered because I didn’t have the distance in my legs. That led to an invite to the 2005 Frankfurt Marathon, where I ran 2:41 and finished ninth, having also finished seventh in the Vienna City Marathon earlier that year.” She also claimed that year’s SA Half Marathon Champs title in Durban, and her great form saw her selected for the 2006 Commonwealth Games team to go to Australia, which remains one of the highlights of her career. “There is always something special about lining up to represent your country for the first time at a World Games, and I was on cloud nine from start to finish, running another 2:41.”

Tanith finished second in the SA Marathon Champs in 2007 and then ran the 2007 All Africa Games Marathon, as well as the World Athletics Champs marathons in 2007 and 2009, with top 10 finishes in numerous international races in between. Then came 2010 and her best year to date, after she signed up with Cape Town-based coach Andrew Bosch. She finished second in the Xiamen Half in China and the Bristol Half in the UK, was third in the SA Half Marathon Champs, and in marathons finished 15^th in London and eighth in Berlin. “Running London was amazing, as I had lived there for quite a few years, and I was most pleased about my PB 2:34. Then in Berlin I ran 2:32, so 2010 was definitely a good year – I broke all my PBs from 15km to the marathon!”

BACK TO EARTH

After such a great year, it was almost inevitable that 2011 would prove to be less successful and Tanith struggled with illness, a chronic Achilles injury and a loss of confidence. Unfortunately, the 2012 Olympics in London then also proved a frustrating disappointment as a fit-again Tanith picked up a chest infection and was taken out of the Olympic Village so that she wouldn’t infect her marathon teammates, Rene Kalmer and Irvette van Zyl. “London is one of my pinnacle highlights, because I had watched the Olympics since 1984 and never dreamt I would be part of it, but the chest infection did spoil things a bit, even though I managed another 2:41.”

With a newfound confidence thanks to Andrew’s input and recent good results, Tanith is now looking forward to 2015 and her first foray into ultras. “After my competitive days are over, I see myself giving back to the sport through coaching, but for now, being able to have your sport as almost your full-time job, doing something that you love, is such a privilege – especially with incredibly supportive people like my parents, Andrew and my manager Rhyn Swanepoel behind me. It would have been impossible to reach the heights I have without them.”