On the morning of 24 April, Prof Dewald van Niekerk, laced up his running shoes and started running around his house in Potchefstroom. The time was 10:30. When he finally stopped to unlace his shoes, twenty-four hours and ten minutes later, he’d circled his house 1 100 times to clock a distance of 110km.
Dewald, together with hundreds of fellow trail runners from across the country, took part in the Ultra Trail Drakensberg (UTD) Lockdown Edition, a virtual race inspired by the social distancing recommendations that make standard trail running impossible in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Apart from keeping fit, Dewald’s participation saw him raise more than R10 000 for the JB Marks Local Municipality’s Disaster Relief Fund. These funds will be used to alleviate hunger during the lockdown period.
The virtual race was intended to fill a void for trail runners who saw their race calendars wiped clean by the spread of the coronavirus. According to Dewald the challenge posed a fun way to test his fitness and join in doing something together as a trail running community without leaving his house. The annual UTD trail running festival sees athletes take part in events of 160km, 100km, 62 km, 32km and 21km but during the current lockdown period, competitors were challenged to run 10% of the set distances in their own areas of confinement. In Dewald’s case, this meant his yard.
“My first aim was to complete all five distances,” says Dewald who easily completed the required 39.5km. Since he still felt fresh and fit, he decided to take part in a 6th event, the UTDunlimeted, where runners could run as far as they wanted until the official cut-off time.
Each step for charity
The idea of running for a purpose stuck early on in his run and served as a great motivating factor during his endeavour. “In the early hours of the morning when fatigue sets in, and you are all alone, it gets very difficult, both mentally and physically,” explains Dewald and says that he had to dig deep to complete the challenge.
The challenge saw supporters backing him financially for each kilometre he completed. Some sponsored him R3 per kilometre whilst others dug deeper in their pockets.
And what is next?
“Hopefully the open road!” laughs Dewald who admits that running in one’s own yard is much more challenging than it seems.
* Dewald is a Professor in Disaster Risk Reduction and the director of the African Centre for Disaster Studies at the North-West University.
Prof Dewald van Niekerk.
