2009 Traumeel Wally Hayward Marathon

This past Friday, 1 May, I ran my fifth Wally Hayward Marathon. Seems like I have been doing my fifth of a lot of races lately!

The Wally has always been my preferred Comrades qualifying race, but this year it was simply a training race as it is no longer a qualifier due to the Comrades being earlier. The race organisers also added a 32 km race for people the are busy with their taper running up to the big one. The 2009 event included 5, 10, 21, 32 and 42 km races!

I decided to do the marathon to get some much needed distance on my legs, but did not want to go very hard on the day. My plan was to do about 3:30 to 3:50. But in keeping with my recent run of very enjoyable runs, the Wally turned out no different. I ran with a club mate from Irene and I finished the race (very very comfortably I must add) in 3:17! Which is no less than about 6 minutes faster than my previous marathon PB. As on the Loskop, my legs felt great throughout and by the next day I would not have said that I even ran the previous day. 3:17 would have given me a B Comrades seeding, but I am happy with my current D from the Loskop. Don't want to start too fast again!

The two lap route of the marathon is probably one of the easiest around with only the hill at the very end that is challenging in any way, for me that is. There are some minor bumps along the way, but none really worth mentioning. The race is always enjoyable in a no frills no fuss kind of way and this year was no exception.

The new distance, the 32 km seemed to be a very popular distance judging by all the people we were passing on the road, the routes overlapped quite a bit.

The 2009 was a pretty big success judging by the comments on the race's website;

"In previous years, entries have consistently been around 4000 - 4500 (with pre-entries).This year the pre-entry requirement was removed and provision was made for a significant increase in entries.

However, the huge extent of the increase in entries obviously exceeded our most optimistic predictions. So, towards the end, we ran out of medals and goody bags, and many athletes ended up with larger T-Shirts than they would have preferred. Arrangements have been made to get more medals ASAP for these unfortunate athletes.

We will obviously consider ways and means to contend with a further significant increase in 2010, to try to avoid a re-occurrence.

It is interesting that at one stage, the Wally was the second largest race in SA! If this trend continues, with your support, it could well be again!

We hope to see you, with many more of your friends, on 1 May 2010!" - taken from the Wally Hayward Marathon website.

Some of the thousands of cars;