It started out small. Taking off a week to have a challenging running adventure. The idea soon reached epic proportions when friends, Matthew Murray and Charles Raw, turned their sights on combining it with a cause.
They’ve reached out to non-profit organisation Wild Impact (https://wildimpact.earth) as they had shared ethos. Earth. Wildlife.
Humankind. Matt was familiar with their work through his years at & Beyond’s Phinda Private Game Reserve. Supporting the conservation of wild land-scapes and seascapes and the sustainable development of communities that live in or adjacent to them spoke to them both.
They landed on raising funds for an existing school, Velakukhanya Primary School, situated in KwaZulu-Natal.
With currently more than 60 kids per classroom, inappro-priate kitchen facilities, un-sound administrative block and lack of operations and storage space, they seek support to construct three new double classrooms and refurbish some of the existing structure.
Both put their careers on hold and set out to literally run the km’s to pay forward. The goal… 1222km in 35 days from Port Alfred to Cape Town on some of South Africa’s finest scenic roads. Now if you’ve ever dabbled a little with training, you’d understand that running two half marathons one week apart takes something out of the engine. This challenge meant running an average of 35km’s a day over 35 days. Pretty insane, incredible and admirable at once.
But as they say, there’s a village behind raising a child and these two had a power-house tribe on the road with them. Charlie’s wife doubles as support driver & photographer whilst being co-piloted by their 2-year-old daughter. Matt’s wife seemed to have given a thumbs up on this madness to start when their newborn was only three weeks old and drove most of the way along. Parents flew in on some stretches and even Carte Blanche picked up their story and did interviews mid-journey.
Hangklip Athletics Club caught them on day 30, after the completion of 1006km, on their Hermanus/Kleinmond stage and did a bit of running chatting with the ultra-fit, ultra-inspiring duo. With only four days left to go, there was some time for reflecting.
When you ask about the trials and tribulations on route it was clear that the dynamics with the amount of moving onto new overnight spots is energy spent you didn’t expect. Injury also almost curbed their dream when Matt suffered a severe Achilles injury early on. For several days it meant one walking and one running to complete the task. Mentally this is the stuff that breaks humans.
As they moved along their route many individuals and clubs supported stints of running. Community, friendships and connections were formed.
To wake up daily at 3:30am over a month period and be marathon run-ready is already a tall order. Doing so with two kids under two years old, sleeping in a new bed every night, getting the correct nutrition down and nursing the sore muscles is next level.
Watching them on the brink of completion, you realise that people move mountains when they stretch limits. We will be watching them at Two Oceans and Comrades this year.
Dániel Müller
Photo credit: RAW EXPOSURE
