Gerda Steyn, a four-time Comrades Marathon winner and reigning Queen of Ultramarathon running in South Africa, has highlighted the mental and physical challenges beyond the distance. Picture: Armand Hough / Independent Newspapers
Image: Armand Hough/Independent Newspapers
It’s quite startling when someone like Gerda Steyn says she is ‘still learning how to run the Comrades Marathon’, but that reveals more about her humility than her extraordinary ability.
In just over one month, Steyn will once again line up as the heavy favourite for the women’s race of the Comrades Marathon.
It’s a race she has won four times, but few realise she’s actually taken part in the race eight times.
After Steyn got into road running relatively late in her life, she ran her first Comrades in 2015. After she finished an impressive 56th in her debut, the bug must have bit.
The next year she finished 13th in both Two Oceans and Comrades. In fact, Steyn took over an hour off her debut time in Comrades alone.
The signs were certainly there, but not that she would go on to dominate the way she had.
Her breakthrough victory came at Two Oceans in 2017, but Comrades would still elude her that year as she claimed second place.
Since then though, Steyn has won Comrades four times as she steadily rose to sit aloft her throne as the Queen of Ultramarathon running in South Africa.
Yet, in one of her latest posts on Facebook it seemed like all this success was a bit strange to Steyn.
“I can’t actually believe that it will be the ninth time that I will line up for it this year! I feel like I am still learning so much about how to run it and every year brings a different perspective,” said Steyn.
“The distance is one thing, but the real race is much bigger than that. We run what is in front of us, race those who line up next to us, overcome the limitations inside of us, and that is what it is all about.”