The Olympic marathon is fascinating, and for an avid runner like Louis Massyn it’s one of those highlights in life you stay home for to watch on TV. From reading the newspapers in the run up to the event right up to the opening ceremony, anticipation will build. How will the South African runners do at the end of the event? The joy of the competition, the excitement of the race, how wonderful would it feel to be there with them, to participate in such a world class race?
Louis’ love affair with running got ignited by the bishop of Bloemfontein. “I was a young lad and listened to his sermon,” Louis remembers fondly. “He compared the strength we need to go through life with the persistence needed to complete the Comrades marathon. I didn’t know much about the Comrades, but that day, I made up my mind to find out!” The Comrades is a foot race between the inland city of Pietermaritzburg and the coastal city of Durban, some ninety kilometers apart. It started in 1921 as a living memorial for the fallen heroes in the First World War. Very much like the Olympics, it is the one day each year when South Africans unite in their attention to their most loved sporting event. Who will be the winner at the end of the day? 1973 would be the first year when Louis submitted himself to the challenge. Never having run a race before, that day he learnt what it meant to run and not to give up.
The route is hilly and there is a time limit. In recent years, there have been more than twenty thousand runners that take part annually. “I was 22 when I first ran the race. I was exhausted when I reached the finish, but the feeling you get afterwards, the feeling of pride and accomplishment is worth all the agony!” He got a taste of what the bishop meant with strength and persistence. In the following years he gradually learnt how to train properly and how to strategize on the road and save your energy to make it to the end. He achieved a very respectable personal best of just under six and a half hours and has now completed the race 47 consecutive times, only missing the race last year due to injury.
“The Comrades Marathon has become the fixture in my annual calendar, and with it my interest in running, and participation in races grew far beyond just the Comrades.” During all those years he has lived in the same home near Welkom, a former gold mining town in a sparsely populated area in the Free State province. Some of the great South African runners have lived in Welkom, including previous Comrades and World Major winners. In the seventies, when road running started to become more popular, no marathons were available in his local area. He decided to organize a marathon at home and founded the Mielie marathon. They just celebrated the 44th running of the event and of course Louis participated. The route takes the runners right along Louis’ home, where his wife Rita will be waiting to cheer him on. In fact, she is his biggest fan. They frequently drive to races together all over the country. In the year 1984 Louis won the Mielie marathon. Although a talented runner with a personal best of 2:30 on the marathon, he won the race because a course marshall had sent the leading runners in the wrong direction. Of course Louis knew the route by heart, and noticed the mistake. At that point it was too late for the leaders to catch up. He still feels he didn’t deserve the win and refused the prize money.
Back in those early days when running became a mass participation sport, it was also the time of Apartheid in South Africa, where the laws divided the people. Only in 1979 running races were opened to people of all colors. Yet in 1980 at the Dewetsdorp Marathon there were still no facilities available for colored runners. Louis won the marathon that year, and invited the colored runners to join and share facilities and everything else that was open to white runners. “It felt wrong to pretend our colored friends were not there. We all fight the sames foes out there on the road! Running can unite us, that’s the beauty of running.” In more recent years he has brought school supplies donated to a local school in Touwsriver. He would pass by the town while on the way, with Rita, to the beautiful Two Oceans marathon in Cape Town. “It felt like a huge privilege that I could deliver these desperately needed supplies to the poor kids. It meant half a day well spent with our next generation. It meant a dozen pairs of brown eyes looking at me intently, waiting for what I’m going to say next. Looking into their eyes is heart warming and I love to inspire through running.”
His running career has spanned five decades. “I’ll keep running until my legs can’t carry me anymore,” he says. Now in his early seventies he recently has been able to travel abroad and complete each of the World Majors. Louis and Rita have become a well known couple in South African running circles. With more than five hundred medals in marathons and ultras, and record setting participations in the Comrades and Two Oceans marathons (both would be called ultras in other parts of the world), he regularly visits running clubs in other provinces to tell stories and inspire and unite runners across race, age and ability boundaries. He looks forward to running the Marathon pour Tous as the crown on his lengthy running career.
Final reflection, was Hugh Amoore right? How did those 50 years of running compare with what you need in life? What did it teach you?
