Personal message

2019, the year I ran the Comrades ultra marathon...and swore never to run it again.

Two Covid interrupted years later, I'll be lacing up the sneakers again to run 90km "down hill" from Pietermaritzburg to the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban.

As an additional challenge, about a month later, I'll be back on the trails, to join another bunch of crazies, to run one of South Africa's oldest ultra travel events, The PUFfeR. This event starts down near Cape Point and 65km, 2200m vert elevation later, finishes in the Cape Town city centre.

This year's challenge is to run these two ultra marathons to raise some funds and create opportunities for the young children of the VUSA Rugby and Learning Academy.  

Growing up in a small country town I saw first-hand the power and impact of sport on youth development - I hate to think what we would have gotten up to if sport and recreational opportunities weren't available to us.  This unfortunately is the reality for thousands of impoverished children in South Africa resulting in challenges like poor mental and physical health, addiction, homelessness, crime and family breakdown.  The VUSA Academy works with youth in the Langa community offering a structured after school programme to address some of these challenges.  They do this through the provision of academic support in English and Maths, rugby as the primary sport and providing each child with a hot meal at the end of each day.  (A hungry child cannot function). The Academy also works with 3 registered ECD centres as early intervention is key and creates recreational opportunities to expose children to a world outside of their four corners.

I have set my initial target at R5000 target at R10,000, as even this small amount already makes a huge difference.  It covers the transport costs to their Saturday morning rugby match.  It covers a coach’s salary for a month (coaches are all employed from within the community and continue to be upskilled).  It feeds 3 children for a year and pays for 2 children’s educational support for a year.

Please watch the short clip above to see why this programme has crept into our hearts.

“Don’t run with your legs, run with your heart.”
— Dean Karnazes

Donations