Of Marathons and Food

In my last post I mentioned the South African obsession with keeping fit. News from Brighton this week reminds me that the need to be fit has to be taken to an even higher level. Brighton, which cannot even organise the removal of dangerous bits of metal that lie in the sea year after year from its collapsing pier is nevertheless going to organise a marathon. I hear that various members of Church of Christ the King are committed to run more than 26 miles whilst a lot of other church members are going to cheer them on and steward the event; which is probably the more life saving option. I remember once talking to a young lady from Moorlands Bible College, where I was teaching at the time, about her experience of running the London Marathon. She said she’d never do it again as she nearly died of boredom with no one to talk to for 26 miles!

However here in South Africa they not only run marathons, they run ultramarathons. The Two Oceans run sweeps around Cape Town fora full 56 kilometers and right now many are in serious training for this fun event. But even this is eclipsed by the Comrades Marathon which is run a full 90 kilometers from Pietermaritzburg to Durban - downhill; but every alternate year is sadistically reversed and run uphill! One of the saddest stories I’ve heard was told to me last week by one of the staff members here in Jubilee who some years ago ran the Comrades. After 11 or 12 hours a gun is fired to declare that the race is over and if you haven’t reached the line, that is it, you are deemed not to have finished. For this particular staff member the gun went off when he was just a hundred meters from the line - he was the first person ‘not to finish’ - surely there ought to be a prize for that.

Runners, of course, need a good and substantial diet. Several people have asked me what I think of the food in South Africa. Well the most important news here is that Marmite is readily available. In reality we eat very much the same here as we do in the UK, and any differences are rather subtle. I am slightly penalised at breakfast because my morning cereal of many years, namely shreddies, are not available here. I therefore eat Weet-bix, which is rather like the English Weetabix except that they add some quick drying cement. Clearly the biscuits can double as highly effective roof tiles, which is what I personally call them, though I do actually quite like them; it’s just that you have to chew a lot harder at breakfast.

One of the slightly odd things here is that green is red and red is green - I’m referring to the milk. In the UK, no fat, no taste milk is purchased with a red top. Low fat, attempting a slight hint of flavour milk, comes with a green top. But in South Africa they swap the colours round to confuse the British. You can imagine the scene early every morning as I stagger towards the fridge to get the milk in an attempt to melt the roof tiles, how that every day I have to think is it red or is it green that I want. And of course on occasions I forget and pour South African green top onto my tiles, to see them, in effect, lying in a pool of murky water.

Fruit is generally quite a bit cheaper in South Africa and there are some rather exotic fruits available. This generally pleases my wife who is a great consumer of fruit. She also produces large quantities of fruit for me for dessert - what’s wrong with ice cream and chocolate sauce I ask? Also any fruit is only available in its season, which actually we appreciate. I’ve never reckoned it to be an advantage to eat strawberries in January in the UK as well as at every other time of the year. And of course outside of the delicious English strawberry season we get those rather grim Spanish strawberries, as large as tennis balls, seemingly produced out of waste rubber and with as much taste as red topped milk - or green topped in South Africa - I nearly caught you out there! In fact years ago Sue’s step father bit deeply into one of these imported straberries and found a large and live worm in his mouth ; but don’t let that put you off; even though it was the start of the Spanish worm flu epidemic.

Meanwhile I continue with the skipping so that should I recieve a sudden call to run the Comrdes or if Matt Davis funks it and pleads a pulled muscle and I have to replace him in the Brighton Marathon, I will be fit and ready. It’s a good thing we can so easily buy chocolate in South Africa as this is a very necessary staple food to support all the exercise.

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