Comrades Marathon
Photo – planetrugby.com
Perhaps the most astonishing revelation of the glorious and superhuman Springbok rugby world cup triumph a couple of weeks ago was that they were able to win three massive, and exhausting games in a row. (Albeit each by one agonising point.)
Eben Etzebeth is purported to have said “Why win by two points or more? It will look like we tried too hard.”
Alan Robb
I’m not a superstitious person. I’ll walk under a ladder, and I’ll stroke a black cat that crosses my path. I hardly notice Friday 13th and I would happily sit in seat in seat 13 on a plane if there was one. I eat the chicken on a wishbone, and I always forget to make a wish.
But I would never dare forget to greet Arthur Newton as I run past Arthur’s seat in the Comrades marathon.
Alan Robb
Glued into one of my old scrapbooks are some faded dog-eared newspaper articles of the 1978 Comrades marathon. That year I ran my second Comrades Marathon and my first down run. To be honest I kept these articles because my 14th place finish meant my name appeared in those newspapers that published the first 20 finishers. Fame at last! One photograph in that scrapbook, however, always catches my eye. It’s a faded black and white photo of Alan Robb’s head poking out from above a shower door. Clearly, he is enjoying a shower in Durban’s famous Kingsmead stadium. Alan’s running vest is also captured in the photo. It dangles from a towel rack with Alan’s Comrades number, 1704 still pinned to it.