Silwane trains for the Comrades

I have never run the Comrades Marathon. This is because I studied Human Physiology and Biochemistry and I am privy to simple concepts that the rest of the population seems unaware of.

For instance, how many people know that muscles are constructed from proteins and that proteins have a propensity to denature under certain stresses, such as losing one’s mind and jogging for 90 km? For a visual, imagine a steak in a boiling pot of water. The denaturation of proteins (otherwise known as cooking) is often an irreversible process and I personally like the shape of my drumsticks as they are.

But around this time of year I always get an attack of dementia and start fantasizing about running the Comrades the following year. This is because there is always a high profile couch potato who tackles the Comrades and makes me feel inadequate. A few years ago it was Kabelo Mabalane the kwaito pastor, who also goes by the pseudonym Booga Luv the Fat Cat. A few days ago I heard that Mondli Makhanya is running the 2009 race. I’ve met Mondli and realised that he also has quite an impressive tyre around the waist and if he can do it…

And this is how it came to pass that I woke up this morning and decided to make an early start towards my preparation for the 2009 race. I was going to be damned if I was going to be shown up by Mondli. My body has been sore since I played two sets of tennis on Sunday morning after an almost 5-month hiatus from the game. So I did the right thing by doing some stretch exercises in front of the house for about 10 minutes. This had the desired effect because a healthy film of sweat soon enveloped my face and torso in the one degree Highveld morning.

But the exertions of the stretch exercises also left me rather breathless and parched. At this point you would think that this would have given me a clue of things to come. Even at the peak of my athleticism in high school I had never really been a long distance kind of guy. Sure, I’d do about 30 km twice in the week preceding an important football game when I was in my school’s first team. But I was always more comfortable with the sprints and even clocked an impressive sub-13 second personal best in the 100m dash. Not bad for a 1.7m tall top-heavy, scrawny little man.

But the last time I’d done any significant distance had been about six years ago when I last ran the ABSA corporate relay. That day I had chosen the 8.8km leg of the relay somewhere between Germiston and Boksburg. Midway through the whole thing, with 70-year old tannies whizzing past me on either side, I swore never to subject myself to this senseless torture. How soon we forget.

My destination this morning was the Engen filling station just round the corner, which I was certain, was going to be a breeze. I’d sprint there and back in no time. After all, the speedometer in my car assured me that the distance is a meagre 2.15 km. That means 4.3 km in total. And as I always tell my wife; I may have gained an extra 20kg of bulk since she met me about eight years ago, but my cardiovascular fitness is quite impressive. She always snorts derisively when I say this and mumbles something inaudible about bed and a lack of evidence, but I don’t have time to decipher codes. I guess the green monster has that effect on some people.

So I set off on my easy little stroll to the Engen. Oh, what an impressive, elegant sight I must have made as I glided effortlessly towards my destination. All the dogs in my street left their kennels and gave me a guard of honour as I attacked the tarmac with the ferociousness of that nuggetty little Russian, Kotov. A few bitches even went into acute heat and started howling at the sky and ululating. I smiled smugly and thought, ‘who can blame them for marvelling at this fine specimen of manhood?’

My street is quite short — 150 metres at most. About 20 metres from the corner, strange things started happening. The first thing that happened is that I must have tripped on an invisible boulder strategically placed in the middle of the street. My feet lost all co-ordination and I stumbled around like an inebriated crab. And then I realised the extent of my wife’s jealousy at my physical superiority. I discovered that she must have stuffed a few invisible weights inside my training shoes and track pants.

Allow me to digress and return to a little description of some anatomical miracles that have happened to my physique in recent times. I have mentioned that I have gained about 20kg in the last eight years or so. All pure Zulu meat of course. No fat. I swear. But the muscle I have gained has not necessarily been evenly spread over my athletic body. About 10kg of it settled on the prime real estate around my waist, another 5kg around my rear, about 4kg on my thighs and the remaining 1kg…Well, let’s just say I’m a very confident man at a public urinal.

But none of the extra poundage made the Great Trek towards my lower legs. If you were instructed on Grade 10 physics you might remember a chapter on levers and fulcrums and appreciate the constraints of matchstick legs that were designed to carry 65kg max, now having to deal with 85kg. And let’s not forget the added lead weights the vindictive Cruella (commonly known as Mrs Silwane) put in my shoes and pants. I came to this realisation of the laws of physics, as my bouncy jog became a slow, painful shuffle.

Conventional wisdom is that walking speed is about 2km per hour. By the time I hit the corner and joined the main road leading to the Engen, I think I was shuffling along at an average velocity of 2.5 km/hour, give or take a few metres per second. Bolts of excruciating pain where shooting up from my ankles up my calves. Two hundred metres into the main road I discovered that the sacral vertebrae in my lower back region were dislocated because I could aurally hear them grinding against each other.

Because I’m a strong black man I have not cried in a few years, the last time being the day I heard that Beyonce Knowles was no longer available. I discovered this morning that that my tear ducts are overflowing as a result. Tears started streaming down my face without warning. Someone also opened the taps inside my nostrils and snot flowed freely over my lips like the Msunduzi River on the first day of the Dusi. By this time I had covered an impressive 37km (900 metres in real distance). I was getting bolts of pain from parts of my body that I had never been aware of before.

The ligaments in my knee joints were creaking, my ribcage was rattling and my sternum felt like someone had set it on fire. I was starting to worry that I might need surgery after this because I was feeling pain in some of my internal organs — my heart, lungs, spleen, pancreas and liver all felt like they had been marinated in vinegar. Hell, even my ovaries were starting to burn. And I don’t even have ovaries!

When I finally stumbled onto the courtyard of the Engen breathing through my mouth like an angry bull, my nostrils flaring, all the petrol attendants who are normally courteous to me, gave me a wide berth like I was infected with leprosy.

After begging for the return taxi fare for about ten minutes from my heartless fellow men, I gave up and decided that I would walk back. No such luck. Two young men in shorts; one about ten and the other about nine, approached me with admiration-filled eyes.

‘Are you jogging back in the direction of the hospital?’ Thando, the chubby, yellow one asked.

‘Er…yes.’ I offered weakly.

‘Cool. We’re going back that way ourselves. We’ll jog with you.’

And this is how I found myself ~~jogging~~ shuffling back in the direction of the house with two cruel little urchins, Thando and Junior. What kind of girly names are these?

Thando would streak ahead of me and then slow down, look back with a quizzical ‘are you seriously telling me you can’t run faster than that?’ look. He would then drop back and Junior would take over from him as a pacesetter. A tag team.

‘Mshiyeni laTata otyebileyo makwedini!’ [Let the fat man eat dust, boys!], three men sitting at the back of an open van yell. I hope Msholozi takes over next year and squeezes their Xhosa asses.

At some point I start wondering if I’ve overran all the way to Rosslyn because I’m catching the unmistakable odour of a brewery until I realise that it’s fumes emanating from my pores. The good news is that I am in so much pain my body has gone completely numb.

Thando and Junior do not have a drop of perspiration on them. As a matter fact, they are having an animated conversation and, now and then, want to rope me in, the sons of brothel dwellers.

‘So do you jog everyday, sir?’ asks Junior, the skinny one with the face of a rock rabbit.

‘Yes’, I lie.

‘Oh cool. We’ll join you tomorrow.’

By the time we get to my street, I have slowed down to a 1km/hour shuffle and the two boys have even stopped jogging. They’re just walking on either side of me. Mondli can take all the freaking glory. This is not for me. I may have lost my mind a while ago, but I still have some smears of grey matter somewhere in my skull.

I’ve got my revenge on my two torturers from this morning. When we parted ways I told them I’m jogging at 7 tomorrow morning. Temperatures at that time of morning are close to freezing. I hope they’re dumb enough to wait for me in the freezing cold for at least half an hour while I’m snugly in bed.

And I hope they die a slow, painful, hypothermic death, the fit little bastards.