Comrades up the stakes for 2019 uprun
The 2019 Comrades Marathon could see a South African winner walking away with over R1 million.
The winner of the Up Run Comrades on 9 June 2019 could earn a R1 million pay day if they can beat the current best time of 5:24:49 run by Leonid Shvetsov in 2008, or 6:09:24 by Elena Nurgalieva in 2005.
This is just one of the new features for next years Comrades from Durban to Pietermaritzburg which will be run under the slogan “Sizonqoba – together we triumph”
The now customary increase in prize money will see the top ten men and women walk away with R2.46 million of the total R4.63 million on offer.
While there are many changes coming over the next couple of years, runners will welcome the introduction of two new medals;
Those making the 90km journey to Scottsville between 9 hours and 10 hours will now earn the Robert Mtshali medal. Mtshali was the first black African to complete the race in 1935 taking 9 hours 30 minutes, and the medal celebrating his run will be made out of titanium.
The second medal will equate with the “Wally’ (named after Wally hayward) which is for runners who finish under 6 hours but miss out on gold. The new Isavel Roche Kelly will go to those women runners who finish under 7 hours 30 minutes but are outside the gold. Roche Kelly was the first woman to break 7:30 in 1980 and went on to win in 1981 in 6 hours 45 minutes.
This will see the complete medal range being Gold Wally or Roche-Kelly, Bill (Bill Rowan), ‘Bob’ (Robert Mtshali, Bronze, Vic (Vic Clapham) and is bound to inspire many to train harder for these new awards.
Not so welcome to the runners will be the restricting of qualifying time to 4 hours 50 minutes for the marathon and 6 hours 45 minutes (as opposed to 7 hours) for the 56km distance. Qualifying period for this year will be open until 2nd May but entries will close on 10 December for Local entries and the cost has increased to R600.
When the entries open on 19 October there will be no early-bird price reduction for South Africans which is going to hit a number of runners quite hard in the current financial restrictions, and probably a delay in entry uptake until the monthly pay days.
Surprisingly the organisers have upped the totally number of runners by 5000 to 25000 which will see even greater crowds on the narrow route from Hillcrest through to the suburbs of Pietermaritzburg.