Recently I have been doing some reading about stories of the bush wars in Africa during the 1970s and 1980s.
A very interesting story that I came across was about two young men who had been conscripted into the South African army in the late 70s. They had an absolute tyrant of a commander and were stationed on a dust bowl base in the middle of the heat of Namibia. They had no idea about long distance ultra running but they soon found out that their commander was fascinated with the Comrades Marathon and put the word out that anyone from the unit who would train for the event would be exempt from doing his PT sessions for the duration of their training. Many in the platoon signed up thinking that this was their ticket to getting out of his hell sessions.
One by one they dropped out until there was only the two blokes left. They trained hard and got pretty fit, but still had no idea about the course or what they were going to face on the journey.
The commander then put out another word to them that if any of them ran silver, then they would be further exempt from PT for the rest of their two year stint on the base. Both ran silver as this carrot was just something that was too great to miss out on.
Running together – stride for stride on a life changing ride! – Sean Muller
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