By Robert Luckock
SIMPSON BAY—The first thing one notices about Mary Wrigley when she throws off her rain jacket arriving at Sint Maarten Yacht Club is how lean she looks… classic runner’s profile, lean, zero fat, but with more muscle definition than before.
I would argue she’s in the best shape of her life for someone who continues to push back on advancing age. Then there’s the added glow that comes from a long holiday in the UK and Norway where she visited her daughter.
There’s a good reason she looks so fit. Prior to the holiday, Mary (66) ran the 95th Comrades Marathon in South Africa, the country’s oldest and most famous road race. Due to COVID-19 the race was cancelled in 2020 and 2021.
She completed the 90K distance in the Women’s 60 Plus group in 11 hours, 17 minutes and 09 seconds, finishing in 30th place among the women in her specific age group. She spent 5 hours 52 minutes running and walked 5 hours and 5 hours 14 minutes due to several uphill and downhill sections.
Her average pace was 7.26, average cadence 121, ascent was 1,144 metres and descent 1,836 metres. She burnt 5, 294 calories, average heart rate was 122 and maximum HR 178.
For the number crunchers, the statistics produced by the organisers are quite mind boggling…15, 986 entries, 13,214 starters, 11,713 finishers, including 2,380 female finishers. And this is only a few of the stats.
It’s not the first time Mary has done the Comrades, she did it 15 years ago at age 51 finishing in 10 hours 06 minutes and was going to enter again the year after but decided not to when her training did not go well. No problems this time however.
“I trained for six months starting in March 2022,” Mary disclosed. “I had a training plan although I didn’t always achieve it for one reason or another. But I did do 172 hours on the road here in St. Martin and covered 1,630 kilometres.
“I wasn’t even sure I was going to South Africa until a month before the race when I did my longest 60K training run. I wanted to be sure that I could finish because it is a gun-to-gun race with a 12-hour cut off. Now I want to go back and do it again, to get my time down to 10 or 10 and a half hours.”
As for preparation, strength training and mobility training are very important, she says. Surprisingly, Ballet also helped to keep her feet strong. If she does go back next year, she will focus more on strength training and stretching in addition to eating up the miles.
To enter the race, she had to have a qualifying marathon to show organisers. It was her intention to do the Aruba Marathon but she couldn’t get a flight so organisers let her do a 42.2K Run in St. Martin recorded on Strava which they accepted.
Her finish was all the more impressive given that she had an Achilles tendon issue during the race and had to have it iced a few times by the physiotherapists at the water stops. But she soldiered on despite the discomfort and pain.
“I don’t know why I had that; I’ve never had an Achilles issue before. I was disappointed by that and it’s another reason why I want to go back and do it again. Otherwise, I had no issues.”
With thousands of runners, the starts go off in waves. Mary had to be in her start pen at 4:30am for a 5:30am start. Pitch black and cold. When they were finally off it took four minutes to cross the start line.
“The dawn light came up about three quarters of an hour into the race and it warmed up nicely. But by the end a wind had picked up, it was drizzling and got very cold. Along the route you could see all the timing points where mini satellites beeped as they caught all the numbers coming through. Everyone said how good the tracking was of the runners for people watching remotely.”
Mary also remarked how fascinating it was to see double 40 ft container trucks supplying water and hydrating liquids to all the water stops at every three kilometres. Nine tons of bananas were consumed during the race. Spectators even passed out food to runners passing by.
South Africa had by far the strongest representation of runners with 11, 275 male runners and 3,084 female runners. The biggest age group was the 40 to 44 group with 3,616 runners (2,755 male and 861 female). Age is no barrier to marathons either. There were 64 runners in the 70 to 74 age group, 15 in the 75 to 79 group and four male runners in the 80 to 84 age group.
One woman collapsed and had to crawl across the finish line. New rules meant officials were not allowed to assist the runner. Two runners sadly died in the race.
The male winner of the race was Tete Dijana (33), a South African security guard, completing the distance in an incredible 5: 30:38. The first woman to finish was Alexandra Morozova in 6:17:48. The first woman to finish the 2022 race in the 60 Plus category, South African Julie Shadwell, completed it in 8:52:24.
Records show that the fastest woman completed it in 5 hours 94 in 1989 and the fastest man in 5 hours 18 minutes in 2016.
