Runners Platform SA

The Nelson Mandela Marathon Cape Town runners have a new date to write into their diaries. On 18 October 2026, the city will host the first Nelson Mandela Marathon, a road running event that slots into the Western Province Athletics calendar alongside the club races, cross country leagues and school meets that already fill most weekends here. The race is organised by Golazo, working with the Nelson Mandela Foundation. Entries open at midday on 22 May 2026, and organisers are expecting around 20,000 runners and walkers across the various distances on offer. The main event is a full 42 km marathon starting on Strand Street and finishing at the Grand Parade. There's also a 21.1 km half marathon, a 10 km and a 5 km, so there's room for people who want to race hard and people who just want to be part of the day. Why the timing matters Race week runs from 11 to 18 October, and every entrant, regardless of distance, gets the bib number 466/64. That was Mandela's prison num...

  A Lightweight Trainer That Actually Earns the Name The EVO SL borrows its name from the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1, a shoe known for costing a small fortune and appearing on elite marathon podiums. The EVO SL is not that shoe. It costs far less, weighs very little, and is aimed at runners who want the lightweight, fast-feeling experience without the financial commitment. After putting it through easy runs, steady efforts, intervals, and longer weekend sessions, the clearest thing I can say is: this is a lightweight training shoe that enjoys going fast. Not a racing shoe dressed up as a trainer. That's actually an important distinction, plenty of shoes blur this line and end up being awkward at both ends. First Impressions It looks quick before you lace it up. The design is stripped back, no bulky overlays, no thick padding layers, nothing that looks like it's there to justify the design budget. Picking it up the first time is slightly disorienting if you're used to daily...

   What Your Body Really Needs After 85.78 Kilometres Welcome, fellow runners and fitness enthusiasts. The finish line of the Comrades Marathon carries a particular feeling that is hard to describe to anyone who has not been there. For months your life revolves around training runs, early mornings, nutrition plans and endless conversations about kilometres. Then it is over. The medal is around your neck. The photographs appear on social media. And the training schedule that dictated every weekend simply disappears overnight. Many runners spend so much time preparing for race day that recovery barely gets a thought. That is a mistake and a surprisingly common one. Running nearly 85.78 kilometres puts serious stress on the body. Muscles, joints, tendons, ligaments and even the immune system take a beating over those many hours on the road. Recovery is not a matter of resting for a few days before returning to normal training. It is the process through which the body actually...

  Three Days Out: The Training Is Done There is a specific kind of quiet that settles over a runner in the final days before Comrades. The alarm still goes off early out of habit. The legs feel oddly restless. You find yourself checking your race number again even though you checked it yesterday. This is normal. This is the taper talking. If you are reading this with race day less than 72 hours away, there is one thing worth saying before anything else: you have already done the hard part. The kilometres are banked. The body has adapted. Whatever fitness you were going to build from months of early alarms and long Sunday runs - it is sitting in your legs right now, waiting for Sunday morning. Nothing you do this week will add to it. A hard session today will not sharpen you. A long run on Friday will not fill a gap you imagine is there. What it will do is cost you, and the bill comes due somewhere between the 60km mark and Polly Shortts. The temptation to do more is real. Runn...

There is a sound that stops time. It has been doing it since 1949. A rooster crow, scratchy and unmistakable, recorded by a man named Max Trimborn who thought it would be a fun way to mark race morning. Trimborn kept crowing at the start of Comrades until he died. Now his voice lives on a recording, and every year on race day, thousands of runners hear it and feel something shift in their chests. That is the Comrades Marathon in miniature - a race so old, so strange, and so deeply human that it has its own ghost. On Sunday, 14 June 2026, that rooster crows again. And this year carries weight that even seasoned Comrades veterans will feel.

A Record-Breaking Journey of Endurance, Empowerment, and Hope Welcome again, fellow runners and fitness enthusiasts. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked more than just the end of the Cold War for a young 23-year-old South African. For Keith Boyd, it signaled the dawn of possibility, a time when Nelson Mandela walked free, the ANC was unbanned, and a Rainbow Nation seemed within reach. But as the years unfolded, personal tragedy and national setbacks would forge a different kind of runner, one driven not just by pace and distance, but by purpose and hope. When Personal Tragedy Meets National Purpose The early 1990s tested Boyd's optimism severely. Political violence threatened South Africa's transition to democracy, Chris Hani's assassination brought the country to civil war's brink, and personal devastation struck when his sister was raped and murdered in Cape Town while his brother-in-law was shot during peacekeeping efforts in KwaZulu-Natal. Yet through it all...