Initially I started this small piece to write
about how I become a marathon runner, but my non-suppressible memory
immediately asserted itself and I was bombarded with enveloping associations: streams
of pictures and smells, sounds too, but mostly visual hooks and aromas linked
to the first days of my attempts at running or jogging. By now I have come to
realise that words are pathetically inadequate in trying to recreate the strong
memories I am capable of but I cannot help myself, I must try to describe them,
so what started out as something on running evolved, no sprinted, into a
tapestry of a special place near Cape Town, and the role it and its surrounding
wonder-wall atmosphere played in my life at that time, so it became a stage,
perhaps a background, to my meagre story on running.
In the fairest part of the Fair Cape, there is a fishing
village called “Kalkbaai” (in the
language of the fishermen), or Kalk Bay on the tongue of the English who came
there in about 1805. Kalkbaai hangs on the eastern flank of the mountains, just
about the opposite side of Cape Town itself, separated from the Mother City by
the Constantia valley and the rest of the verdant suburbs of Bishopscourt and
Newlands. I lived in Kalkbaai, but worked in Wynberg as an attorney, and every time
I came home, it seemed as if the village was trying to slip off the mountain
slope and quietly disappear into False Bay’s snoek and whale waters, happily
and with joy! That was very often the sensation nestling in me as I turned off
Boyes Drive (a mountain road which I used, to avoid the traffic on the Main Road
- which runs along the ocean-front) and into Gatesville Road, Kalk Bay, (where
I lived in a Edwardian stone cottage, see the white arrow, bottom right of the
picture above) and sentimentally-named
‘Slampamper’ (a ‘slampamper’ was
originally a piece of equipment used on the old Dutch sail ships, (and so, a
link to my heritage: my family came to the Cape in 1765, on the VoC ‘Retourschip’,
the “Vrijburg),
but those of you who have read the poems of C Louis Leipoldt will recognise my
cottage’s name in one of his poetic works, “Slampamperliedjies”.
One of those “liedjies” (songs) goes as follows:
Vir my sing
maar liewers van blomme;
Van al, wat die vlei laat verkleur;
Van al, wat die sonskyn laat spartel;
Van voorjaar en najaar se geur;
Vir my sing maar liefs van die water;
Van duikers, wat draf oor die veld;
Van rotse en branders en wolke—
Maar nooit nie, nee nooit nie, van geld!
and in this sense it refers instead to a certain casual,
relaxed attitude to life - something I unfortunately never managed to achieve
for any extended period, myself). When I lived in Kalk Bay, in the early 1980’s
it was already a bohemian type of place, with a rhythm and atmosphere which was
so different from that of Cape Town itself, and Cape Town’s rhythm was already considered
to be out of sync with the commercialised pace of the other major urban centres
of South Africa, so you can imagine just how different Kalk Bay seemed to be to
other South Africans. A lot of this came from the easy-going lifestyle and
colour infusion from the fishing village, affectionately called ‘the flats’ (in the illustration above of
Kalk Bay you can see the last row of buildings in the top right corner) – this
is where they lived, the fishermen, (or ‘vistermanne’
as they called themselves) who would go out on their trawlers every morning (many
of my mornings started with the smells of fresh 
coffee and vague diesel fumes
of the wave-thumping trawlers, chugging out into rough seas- as you can see
from the picture above my cottage was set up quite high and it gave me an understanding,
no, a feeling for the sea, for False Bay. In fact it left me with such an
indelible impression that as I sit here, 30 odd years later and 6000 km away, I
can effortlessly conjure up its serenity, its winds, the clarity and depth of
its blueness as though I’d just returned from Wynberg) to return, early
afternoon to the harbour quays, stalked by hundreds of voracious gulls trying
to scrounge a morsel of the silvery Snoek and Kabeljou on the decks of the
fishing trawlers.
How to get an aerial view of the
scene? If you sailed some distance into False Bay and then used a hot air
balloon to float straight up into the blue, and then turned and looked at Kalk
Bay, with next to it the even smaller village of St James, and then a bit
further to the right, big brother Muizenberg, you’d see that at the top of the
village, in fact the boundary between the mountain and the houses, a road appears
that hugs these villages together, and protects them from the mountains: this
road is named Boyes Drive.
On the mountain-side of Boyes Drive
you have the Cape as it has always been: no houses, no electricity, just
mountain streams emitting and ending in tiny waterfalls at the edge of the
road, with maybe a hiking path every now and then. You would be stunned by the
floral exuberance, the greenness, the softness of the water in your mouth, Watsonias
and Erica would be there, pelargoniums and wild sage, proud, and perhaps the
queens of the mountains, the Proteas and Suikerbossies (Pincushions), about
1500 different types of floral ambassadors of the Cape Floral Kingdom. But I
was always on the look-out for my personal favourites, the white virgins, the ‘Varkore’(Arum
Lily) that have the habit of cosying up to really wet spots, next to gentle
streams or ponds often found on the edge of Boyes Drive.
Along the ocean-side of Boyes Drive I was always charmed
by the secretive and dignified villas, built in an age of elegance and dignity,
usually discreetly hidden behind screens of bougainvillea and Stone pines whose
shapes had been re-styled by the Cape Doctor into living green sculptures- I
went to go and say hello to them again, one last time in 2007.
However, let’s get back to my original purpose: to tell
you about running, jogging, doing marathons, or possibly I should call it the
art of interacting with nature in a manner which some call exercise, but to me
it was the ultimate act of being alone (mostly) whilst being watched and
supported by nature. It gave one an opportunity to ‘close’ your mind to the
insistent and clamouring raft of daily problems, to be able to marshal your thoughts
and memories simultaneously, the heart working in unison with your brain and
soul, propelling you forward to renew your soul and self, at a slow pace - a
perfect unison of human motion and emotion.
Running to me, turned out to be far more complex, emotional and self-developing
that what I thought it could be. It was all that it was. It was a constant redefining of yourself, of
your boundaries, what you really were, or are.
It made me humble, or at least less egotistical, and it taught me
endurance, more so of the spirits than of the body perhaps. I remember, in my
first marathon, the Peninsula Marathon in Cape Town, which was run from the centre
of Cape Town, through the vineyards of Constantia, the chic lanes of Rondebosch
and Newlands, past Pollsmoor prison, and eventually all along the rocky False
Bay coast, to Simonstown, listening to the cheers of the crowds lining the road
being dimmed by the roar of the breakers as we turned into
Muizenberg, just where the route met the sea for the 1st time. As it was my first marathon, I was therefore
completely 
inexperienced, and as is my wont, over-did things again, and became
so exhausted I wanted to stop. A decision fuelled by the shock of having to
experience a number of elderly ‘house wives’ (as I thought of them) shuffling
past me, no running style at all, chunky and certainly no longer svelte, often with
cheaper running shoes than mine, but nevertheless inevitably leaving me behind
and with words of encouragement for me, the young (well relatively young!)
yuppie god in his brand-new New Balance running shoes (I remember them still,
today, all maroon and with a wonderful grippy tread!) This made me determined
to push on in the certain knowledge (belief) that I would eventually catch up
with them and leave them in my wake. By
the time I got to Simonstown many of these ‘losers’ had already overtaken me
and I was in such distress and pain myself, both mentally and physically,
having gone beyond my limits, that I never ever denigrated another runner
again, no matter their shape, size or age!
This running thing-that-got-out-of-hand began in the
early 1980s in Cape Town. I was overweight and extremely unfit (except for the
odd squash game) and I was just not getting any exercise. I was then living in Kalk Bay and had
recently become friends with two fellow attorneys who were also practising law
in Wynberg, Cape Town, Nigel Boast and Lionel Kramer. They were both about my age but already
serious runners, influenced mainly by Lionel, who, even though he had a heart
pacemaker, took his running seriously.
Lionel was an extremely slow runner, obviously because of his medical
condition, but very determined, and you could never count him out. Little did I
know then, that my running sessions with these two would play a major part in
the rest of my life, affecting not only my career, but ultimately, the
relationship with my children- it still haunts and stalks me.
Nigel and Lionel had been trying to talk me into joining
them on early morning runs, but I had steadfastly refused to do so, until one
morning, it was in early February I think, at about five o'clock I was woken up
by the sound of someone banging on my front door and found both of them in
running gear, waiting for me to join them. They dragged me out, dressed in
shorts and squash shoes, and I tried to follow them at a distance, flip-flopping
up the hills of Boyes Drive. I remember not being able to complete 2 kilometres
that first day. They repeated this kidnapping act though, every morning, for a
number of weeks. Of this beginning period, I remember a few things: my bleeding
feet, their jibes at my incompetence (‘uselessness’ as they called it), my
manliness being repeatedly questioned, my slack stomach, fat arse, and lack of
fitness- cries of “come on, get A into G,
you fat wanker!” Somehow this seemed to spur me on, instilling a type of
stubbornness, determined to do better, not to give in to their taunts. We were soon joined by some other runners,
who all eventually became great friends. What I did not realise at the time was
that they had surreptitiously entered me for the Peninsula Marathon, which was
to be run about 2 or 3 weeks later- on 4 March 1983, an act of sheer insanity,
in retrospect, but because of all the insults and cajoling, and because often
my ego outweighs my common sense by the collective tonnage of one hundred elephants,
I eventually agreed to do the Peninsula marathon with them, but I told them I
would stop halfway. Unfortunately, I only had two weeks within which to
prepare, and I remember the first long run we did was supposed to be limited to
20 km, but in the end I felt so strong, we did more than 30km. Somehow the time
and pain just did not become an issue on that run because you were with your best
friends, people who’d suffered and bled with you, plus the route was just so
fabulous (for those of you who have had the insane privilege of running on
Chapmans Peak, which connects Hout Bay and Noordhoek, at 06h00 on a sweet silent
Sunday morning, with the ocean hundreds of metres below you, speaking, foaming
and rushing in blue, and with small waterfalls that await you at every second bend
(Chapmans Peak is literally cut into the mountains), I need not say more. On
this particular run there was never any need to take along water bottles, when
such sweet mountain water was so readily available. We always did Chapmans Peak
very early on Sunday mornings so that there would be no traffic around; and it is
of those runs that I have the most formidable and abiding memories of beauty
and tranquillity - I remember the blueness of the sea, jostling with the even
intenser blue of the sky, and in the distance Hout Bay would just be waking up
to a very early Sunday morning. Once we
got to the other side of the Chapmans Peak drive, where it met the beach again
in Hout Bay we would always stop and have a quick dip in the ocean.
So based on this one 30 km training run I was going to
attempt a marathon. The day of the Peninsula marathon came, and despite my
suffering, as I tried to describe above, I not only managed to finish it, but
even beat my two tormentors, revenge was never so sweet- perhaps it was the
burning desire for revenge that kept me at it, all I wanted was to see their
faces when they came in at the end, to see me standing there waving at them!
After the Peninsula we started training in a more serious
manner and went out, if not every day, most mornings of the week. And, as we
all know now (then we just suspected it, and knew it because it happened to us
all the time) once you start doing a lot of kilometres, your brain releases
endorphins, and in a way, you become hooked on the running- it also helped you
get through the pain, or when hitting the “wall”. In quick succession, i.e. after March 1983, we
also ran a few short local races like the Red Hill half-marathon and then the Mother
City Marathon, which apparently is no longer done - it was about 50 km long.
The other memorable race, en route to the Comrades
marathon, was the Two Oceans Marathon, a 56 km race, quite rightly described as
the most beautiful road race in the world – as you can see from the route map
it covers all the glory spots of the Cape, from the vineyards of 
Constantia to
the two oceans (actually technically not true, the two oceans actually meet at
L’Agulhas, some hundreds of kilometres away, but let’s not destroy the image of
the race!). What I remember most of this race, which I ran more than once, was
that in the final stages I had to help Lionel Kramer to get over the last
mountain, at Constantia Nek, I literally propped him up him up by draping his
arm over my shoulder. An ironic image, when viewed against subsequent events,
events which destroyed my professional life.
Later that year, in October I think, we also did another
interesting race, the Foot of Africa marathon, which is run down in Bredasdorp,
in the Southern Cape. It was worthwhile and scenic, and more of a cross-country
than your standard road a marathon and it was started by the local mayor,
firing a shotgun!
All of this in preparation for the big one, the Comrades
Marathon, which was always run on 31 May. I was, of course physically, not
anywhere near prepared enough for such a double marathon. This says something of the obstinacy and
foolishness of the long-distance runner that I thought that I could run perhaps
the most gruelling ultra-marathon in the world, having only been training since
end of mid-February, about 3 and a half months. Insane. The Comrades is a
mythical, almost double marathon, about 90 km long, a race of the gods (and not
lesser ones either!) which assumed large proportions in my mind, and in my memory
because one of its earliest winners, gladiators, was a friend of my father,
Wally Haywood, who won it 5 times and finished his last Comrades at the tender
age of 81. Of such stuff the true runner is made. Wally Hayward was the only person
I ever see my father in awe of.
We travelled up to Durban, where it started that year, all
of is in a sort of trance, that is the only way I can describe that trip and
the few days before the race, and I only realised it afterwards anyway. This
dreamlike state was, I think induced by a profound fear of the 90 km beast,
when you would be in the tropical heat for more than 10 hours, non-stop,
running, slogging, whimpering, cursing and feeling sorry for yourself, but not
that sorry that you would really stop. Oh, you said to yourself, a zillion
times, that you were definitely going to stop at the next watering point, but then
if you saw your mates still going, you would not shame yourself or your club by
stopping. So, you tried to cope with the blood in your running shoes, (in the
beginning you’d stop for blister treatment, but in the end you just coped with
it and carried on) with the cramps that pulled your legs into Elephant Man-like
shapes, with an overwhelming and desperate need to sleep, to be quiet, be
peaceful, be stopped. Stopped. Rested. But then you’d see someone in an even
worse state than you shuffling up the hill you’d be shamed, and you’d give it
one more hill, just another bend. The Jungian part of my brain tricked me into
counting bends, and hills, not steps and kilometres- it was as if my
unconscious was helping me to survive this psychological onslaught.
Anyway, we all finished it, and in time, more or less. We
were all particularly subdued and quiet afterwards, also on the return trip to
Cape Town, but the next evening, back in cape Town we all got together and watched
the race on television, we were silent, just watching, clutching our beers like
security blankets until the 10th runner approached the line, (he
would be the last one to get a gold medal), and I remember him so well, he was
named Gordon somebody of Oxford Striders, wearing blue and gold. Our eyes were
fixed on him intently willing him on to get there in time, as there was another
runner closing in on him, we were starting to yell at him, extremely loud, to
get going, to get that gold, to not bloody-well give up! We wanted him to get that gold medal so badly,
he was doing it for us after all, we
were running there, as he approached the line he was a bit wobbly but still had
everything under control, still disciplined, and then he made the error for
which we could never forgive him, why till today I can still recall that
horrible image: he turned around to see how far the other runner was still
behind him, and in doing so, he lost all mental control of his muscles- all the
iron discipline and courage, all the control, (knowing that to reach the end he
had to stay in control of his mental and physical faculties), all gone. Before
our horrified eyes he collapsed, dropped like a felled pine tree, 2 metres from
the line, and as we watched him trying to get up, first trying to crawl, to put
just one foot in front in front of the other, we saw that he could not even use
his arms to drag himself across the line, even though he was trying in a
desperate manner- all that was still functioning was his mind, clouded red with
a desire to get that gold medal. Then followed one of the most embarrassing
things I’ve yet experienced: all of us who’d run the comrades just choked up
with tears, but it was silent, the silence of the dreamland we were still in,
the loss which we’d somehow collectively suffered.
So, running had become so intertwined with beautiful and
natural landscapes for me that when I moved to Belgium in 1998 I just could not
get the same vital feed-back from the local natural landscape to build the
necessary motivation, and so my running days ended for a lack of mountains, land-
and seascapes. Now I only run in my memoryscape.
