Early life -- birth to about 6 years old

Although I wasn’t a “honeymoon baby” I did arrive on the scene earlier than my parents had planned to start a family. I was conceived about 6 months after my parents’ wedding and was born a couple of months before my father finished medical school. The text messages of those days were called telegrams. One had to go to a post office, write out the message on a special form and pay (per word) for it to be sent by telegraph to another post office, where it was printed and then delivered by a messenger, usually on a bicycle. So, not exactly instant messaging, but faster than mailing a letter. I inherited 13 telegrams congratulating my parents on my birth. I recognize the names of a few relatives among the senders, but for many others have no clue who they are (and all have long since passed away).

One of the 13 congratulatory telegrams sent to my parents.

Back then the world was still in black-and-white and out of focus

It is probably not surprising that I don’t remember anything about the first time I lived in Cape Town. After all, we moved away when I was just a few months old. Next stop was Uitenhage, now renamed Kariega, which at least means the place now has a reasonably consistent pronunciation. If you are not South African, don’t even try to pronounce Uitenhage. Even for South Africans, the English and Afrikaans pronunciations are so different that they sound like entirely different places. In Afrikaans it is pronounced ate-en-HAA-gha, whereas in English it is YOU-ten-haig in English (or YOU-ten-ha-jee if you wanted to rile up an Afrikaner). Uitenhage is a few miles inland from Port Elizabeth (now renamed Gqeberha – good luck trying to pronounce that) and is probably best known as the location of a large Volkswagen factory which, according to Wikipedia, is the biggest car factory on the African continent. The Port Elizabeth / Uitenhage area was the center of the South Africa motor industry back in the day, with Port Elizabeth being home to the country’s Ford and GM assembly plants as well as Bus Bodies (later Busaf), which made buses used by public transport companies around the country. That was well before Japanese cars became ubiquitous. (From now on I will use the old names, Uitenhage and Port Elizabeth, because that’s what they were called at the time and the names hadn’t yet been changed when we were in South Africa in 2019.)

 

Don’t know where this photo was taken.  It could have been at the house of my maternal grandparents.  The building in the background looks like the rondawel that was close to their main house.  That house was demolished by developers many decades ago.

My father did his medical residency in Uitenhage. From the Christmas card below, that would have been at the Queen Mary Hospital. There is no longer a hospital of that name there, so either it no longer exists, or its name was changed a long time ago. After his residency he apparently joined a private medical practice. I wrote “apparently” because that’s not something I recall but is suggested by some of his correspondence that I inherited.

Christmas card with our Uitenhage address

A friend / playmate that I had when we lived in Uitenhage was Jonathan Levy. Our mothers had been at the same high school and happened across one another when pushing us in strollers. The Levys later emigrated to Israel. They visited us on a trip back to South Africa several years later. A few years ago I did a web search, which turned up a web page maintained by a cousin of Jonathan’s. The cousin passed on a message to Jonathan and we exchanged a few emails (and also with his mother, who has since passed away). After about two years in Uitenhage, my father moved to a new position, at Livingstone Hospital, a government-run hospital in Port Elizabeth. Until the end of the Apartheid era, Livingstone was reserved for Black patients (actually any race other than white), though the medical staff and administrators included white people. I don’t know whether my father was in anesthesiology right from the start or moved to that specialty somewhat later. When we moved to Port Elizabeth my parents rented a house in Clevedon Road, in the Central area of the city, very close to the Port Elizabeth Provincial Hospital, the main hospital in the area for white patients. I don’t know what our house number was or any details of the house, other than it was on the northwest side of the road. The houses were quite old, even in those days. It looks like most of them have been refurbished over the past 60+ years. I used Google Street View to capture an image of a representative house in the street. The old photo of me may be outside the house we were renting. The dog may have been “Chips”. We definitely had a dog of that name a few years later but I don’t know when we acquired it or what happened to it.

 

Generic house in Clevedon Road, from Google Street View

This may have been at the house in Clevedon Road

After about a year in Clevedon Road my parents bought a house in Malvern Avenue, Fern Glen, about 4 miles from the city center but closer to Livingstone Hospital. I recall my father mentioning several times in later years that the house cost something like 4,500 pounds. (This was before the South African currency system was changed from the British pounds, shillings, and pence to rands and cents, shortly before the country became a republic in 1961.) My parents thought that was a lot of money and I gather they had to get a loan from my paternal grandfather (as well as a mortgage from a bank) to be able to buy the house.

Rough rendition of the floorplan of the house in Malvern Avenue when we moved it.  My parents had it modified a few times later and subsequent owners have modified it further.

This is what the house looked like from the street when we visited Port Elizabeth in 2019.  We didn’t try to ask to be allowed to look around inside.  When we lived there the front wall was very low, being more to mark the edge of the property than to keep anyone out (or in).

Aside: Fern Glen is what South Africans refer to as a suburb, but Americans would call a neighborhood. That is, in South African usage a suburb is an area within the city limits whereas in American usage a suburb is a separate municipality. Many years ago I read somewhere that Port Elizabeth and Pretoria were among the largest cities in the world in terms of the area inside their municipal boundaries. If so, that is probably at least in part because they are not hemmed in by a bunch of separate municipalities. Apart from being very windy, Port Elizabeth has a mild climate. According to Wikipedia, the record high temperature is 105.3 F / 40.7 C and the record low temperature is -0.5 C / 31 F. It is almost always windy. Sometimes the wind dies down overnight, so it may be relatively calm early in the morning, but invariably it picks up again later. Because of the wind, many trees grow at an angle. It wasn’t until I moved to Pretoria many years later that I realized that trees grow reasonably vertically if not constantly battered by wind. I don’t know when my brother Mick was born relative to us moving to Malvern Avenue. He was born soon after I turned 3, which is around the time we moved. I was probably too young to notice that my mother was pregnant, either then or when Ian was born a little under 4 years after Mick. It wasn’t until decades later – maybe only after my mother had passed away – that I heard that my mother had had some pregnancy losses between my birth and Ian’s. With me being an “accident” and the pregnancy losses, it would seem that our family turned out quite differently from what my parents may have intended. Many of my memories from our first several years in the house on Malvern Avenue are very hazy, especially in terms of their timing. For instance, the house below us (marked 2 on the photo below from Google maps) was a vacant lot for the first few years that we were there. One day, while it was still an open lot, one of my mother’s friends, Betty van Tonder, stopped by for a brief visit. She left her car parked at the side of the road, with her two daughters, Annette and Frances, inside. Malvern Avenue is on a hill. One of the daughters released the brake and the car started rolling down the hill. Fortunately it turned into the vacant lot and was slowed by the vegetation growing there. Betty ran after the car to try to stop it, slipped and broke a leg. I recently managed to make contact with Frances and asked her about the incident. She said she was the one who released the brake – because her mom was taking too long for her liking.

 

All I remember about the building of the house marked with a 2 is that we nicknamed one of the builders “Fatty Boom-Boom”. Once it was built Oscar and Ruth Swart moved in. I think their son Anthony was born shortly before or after that and they later had another son, Jonathan, who has Down syndrome. (Strangely, the people who lived in the house marked with an 8 for a short time also had a son with Down syndrome, who died while they were living there.) Ruth was a German Jew who, along with a sister Inge, was able to get out of Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport when Ruth was 13 and Inge was 8. All their other relatives were killed in the Holocaust. Inge died in an airplane crash in Cameroon in 1962. I recall Ruth coming over to our house in tears to tell us the news that she had lost her last relative. When I managed to make contact with Anthony several years ago he’d been with his (male) partner for more than 30 years. Although our families lived next door to one another for 20 years, I hadn’t realized back then that he was gay. Maybe that’s partly because the old South Africa was a rather homophobic society, so he didn’t come out until much later.

Ruth Swart being interviewed for the USC Shoah Foundation https://sfi.usc.edu/

Soon after we moved to Malvern Avenue, Edith Hempe started working for us as a live-in housemaid, a role she held for close to 30 years. Most middle-class white families of that era employed a Black housemaid, usually living on site in the “servants’ quarters”. For that our house initially had just a room behind the garage and a separate toilet, but no bath. Edith had to wash in a metal bathtub like the one in the photo, carrying water in jugs from the kitchen to her room. Several years later, the first time my parents added on to the house, the additions included a proper bathroom for Edith. (The other additions at that time included adding a new master bedroom, with en suite bathroom beyond what is marked as my bedroom in the floorplan, and a new second bathroom plus separate shower, with the old bathroom converted to a laundry room.)

Metal bathtub similar to the one Edith Hempe had to use

During the Apartheid era Black people were not allowed to live in white areas, with this being codified in the Group Areas Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_Areas_Act). I don’t know how having Black housemaids (and sometimes also gardeners) living on site fitted in to the Act, but it was definitely allowed. Black people had to carry a pass book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pass_laws) when moving around, and if in a white area at night or over a weekend they also had to have a letter from their employer giving them permission to be there. I remember my mother writing such letters for Edith each time she went home. Edith’s job was more than what I would regard as full time, starting with making breakfast for the family, then making beds and cleaning the house, through to making dinner and washing the dishes afterwards. Housemaids were traditionally given Thursday afternoon and evening off (and local restaurants did good business on Thursday evenings), Edith also had every second weekend off from after lunch on Saturday, when she would go home to her place near Uitenhage. Edith had two children, Reuben who was about my age and Maureen who was a little older. I think that the children lived with Edith’s mother. Edith was a wonderful person. She was very intelligent and could communicate effectively in several languages. It is one of the tragedies of Apartheid that someone such as Edith did not have an opportunity to be more than a housemaid. She was a great cook and had many amusing sayings. One of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t try to find out more about her background and interests or to learn her native language (Xhosa). In mitigation at least of the latter, I am terrible at languages other than English (and passable at that probably only because my mother taught high school English for many years). By the time my “baby” brother Ian reached high school, Xhosa was offered as one of the classes, but it hadn’t been available in my day. Ian has also been much better at languages than me, including studying several languages in college before switching to medicine. If my mother had known back then what she learned later when studying linguistics, she would probably have asked Edith to speak to us (the children) in her own language rather than in English. Children can pick up multiple languages and don’t get too confused as long as each person speaking to them uses a single language consistently. At least that’s what my mother told us before our kids were born. My mother didn’t live to see any of her grandchildren, but we stuck to that advice, with Rietta still speaking to our kids in Afrikaans more than 35 years after Steven was born.

 

Edith Hempe with our son Steven at my parents’ house in Pretoria in 1987 or 1988

Soon after we moved in to our “new” house, my father built (or had someone build) a sandpit in the corner where I have typed “Sandpit” on the image. My father collected bags of sea-sand from the dunes along the coast. He usually took the family for a drive on a Sunday afternoon. He’d first go to Livingstone Hospital to see the patients he would be anesthetizing the next day, while we waited in the car. Then we would typically drive to the harbor where we would often watch a tug maneuvering a ship. After that we’d drive along and past the beachfront, sometimes stopping further on to fill some bags with sand from sand dunes.

Port Elizabeth Harbor as it currently looks on Google Maps.  Back in the day there were usually a couple of ships tied up on the side where it says “Cruise Terminal Port Elizabeth”.

For a while we had rabbits in a hutch next to the sandpit. I don’t recall how long we had them, but think the hutch stood empty for many years after there were no more rabbits. My brothers and I would sometimes find tortoises in the vacant lot next to our house and bring them to our yard. We often pushed them around as if they were toy cars! Picking up and moving a tortoise may have been illegal even back then. Like most other South African families, although we had a washing machine we didn’t have a dryer. Laundry was dried by hanging it outside on the washing line. When I was about 4 years old I started “nursey school”, which is what South Africans called pre-school. Using Google maps and my memory of the approximate location, it was probably a little over 0.6 miles (1 km) from our house. A housemaid used to walk me to there and came to fetch me later. We usually stopped on the way to buy fresh bread at a convenience store. (Milk used to be delivered to our house in glass bottles, but we had to go to a store to buy fresh bread.) I went to nursey school for two years. All I remember about it, other than walking there and back, is a friend, Bryan Heine, who was also there and then went on to the same schools as me through the end of high school. Later I went to his wedding – the only person who was at school with me whose wedding I attended. It was probably a few years after his wedding that his father died in a boating accident. I think I was away at college or doing compulsory military service when that happened. 

Next, on to “big” school.

Prehistoric running, part 2

 

And so at last to running-related content …


Becoming a runner

The observant reader may notice that there is no mention of the word “coach” anywhere in this entry (other than in this paragraph).  That’s because I have never been coached.  The less charitable may say that I am uncoachable.

Maybe I always knew I’d become a runner, even long before I started running.

In 7^th grade (last year of primary school in South Africa), one day I saw a number of boys running across our school grounds, strung out behind one another.  It was apparently a cross country race.  I wondered why I hadn’t know about it and thought it was something I would like to try.  That stayed just a passing thought for a few more years.

The next year, in our first term in high school (the school year was divided into 4 terms, with vacations between each) we had to do various track and field events during the time that the higher grades did “cadets” (marching around in military style uniforms carrying old rifles that had had their mechanisms removed; an activity I loathed, of which I will probably write more in a later entry).  The events we had to do were sprints, jumps and throws – no somewhat longer distance running.  Those all required speed and/or explosive strength, neither of which I possessed.  At the end of the term there was an inter-class track and field competition for the four 8^th grade classes.  Apart from the sprints, jumps and throws, there was an 800m that counted towards the inter-class competition.  Anyone who didn’t do any other event had to run the mile (and nobody who did another event was allowed to run it).  Results of the mile did not count towards the competition.  I wanted to run the mile, but our class needed another body in the 800m and somehow I became that body.  A classmate, Trevor Hall if I recall correctly, and I knew we were slow and made a pact to run together.  At least I thought we had made such a pact.  It may be hard to believe, but apparently I thought wrong.  The race started and, as expected, Trevor and I found ourselves at the back.  We ran together for a while but then Trevor must have decided I was too slow even for him and left me in the lurch.  I finished dead last by a long way.  I have no idea what my time was or if it was even recorded for posterity.  At least I finished, which is more than can be said for another race in which I was last (or thought I was last).  More on that later as it was also before the dawn of written records.

Around that time a popular method of raising funds for a good cause was to hold a “Big Walk”.  The distance was typically 20 miles, with participants trying to persuade family, friends, and businesses to sponsor them for each mile they walked.  While I was still in my first year of high school, our school decided to hold a Big Walk  As South Africa was in the process of switching to the metric system and 30 is a larger number than 20 (and the logic might have been hence it would raise more money) this one was 30km rather than 20 miles and, I think, was called the “Kilometer Canter” or maybe “Kilometer Kanter”.  (Gordon “Billy” Bauer, one of our teachers that year, wrote a song called “Grey will give us Culture; Culture with a capital K”; Grey being our school, named after a former governor of the Cape Colony, Sir George Grey.  Billy Bauer also rebranded the kids’ game of cops & robbers or cowboys & crooks as Nationalists & terrorists, the National Party being the party in power during the Apartheid era.) 

Everyone in the school was required to participate in the Kilometer Kanter.  I have always been reticent about asking people for money, even for a good cause, so didn’t manage to get much in terms of sponsorship.  The starting point was somewhere near the beachfront and the route was roughly C shaped, ending at the school.  We were taken to the starting point in buses.  Because the buses needed to make multiple trips to get everyone to the starting point, we didn’t have a massed start but instead could begin walking (or cantering) as soon as we were dropped off.  Several of my classmates and I decided that walking the whole distance would take too long, so we ran a substantial proportion of the way.  We didn’t try to run all the way, just ran for a while, walked for a while, stopped to drink at the refreshment stations, and so on.  (A few of the boys in higher grades did try to run the whole distance.)  The refreshments were bottles of flavored milk (Steri Stumpies – see photo, though back then the bottles were named of glass rather than plastic).  Being a glutton I consumed far too many bottles.  We were among the earlier finishers, but because of the staggered start it wasn’t clear how much of that was a function of when we had been dropped off and how much because of running a good deal of the way.  I have no idea how much of the distance we actually ran, but am quite sure that was the longest distance in one day until about 7 years later.

Steri Stumpies

What remained a sore point for many of us for the rest of our time in high school was that we were told that part of the money raised would be so there could be hot showers in the changerooms of the new gymnasium that was being (or about to be) built.  We were required to shower after the twice-weekly PT classes and also after participating in sport if we were riding home by bus.  As at the school’s swimming pool, there was no hot water in the showers.  Well, by the time we finished high school more than four years later, there still weren’t hot showers.  The ostensible excuse was that the school’s electricity supply was not adequate and that until a new electricity sub-station was constructed there wouldn’t be enough power to heat water.  I suppose I didn’t really have much right to complain considering my meagre contribution to the fundraising effort.

I might not have been a runner yet, but I must have taken some interest in running.  Our school had an annual general knowledge test that we all had to take.  My general knowledge was rather pitiful.  How could I be expected to know the name of the South African Prime Minister or which year the 1820 Settlers arrived in what became Port Elizabeth (the city in which we lived)?  One of the few questions I managed to get right each year was who had won the Comrades (Ultra) Marathon that year.  It helped that Dave Bagshaw won it 3 times while I was in high school.  In later years the whole race was televised live from start to finish, so many people became aware of who won, but this was still well before the introduction of television in South Africa.  (The question didn’t have to specify that it was the male winner because in those days women were still too sensible to want to run long distances.)


High school cross country

In part 1 of this saga I mentioned that at our high school participation in sport was compulsory and that in the cooler months those who didn’t manage to get selected for any other team had to run cross country.  However, we all (or nearly all) had to run one cross country race each year, an intramural inter-house (a la Harry Potter books) event.  There were two races, one for the younger age group and one for the rest, with 200 competing in each race (50 per house), making a total of 400 of the around 600 boys in the school.  We were supposed to run the course on two separate occasions as training and then the race itself.  I don’t know how I avoided running it in my first two years in high school.  I didn’t deliberately try to get out of it.  Maybe the leaders in my house decided I didn’t look as if I could run and so didn’t select me.  I did run it in my last 3 years though, finishing 64^th, 32^nd, and then 6^th in 10^th, 11^th and 12^th grades, in the latter case coming in ahead of the captains of the cross country and track teams.

I’ve tried to recall the route of the school’s cross country course, but after almost 50 years many details are sketchy.  The start was on one of the rugby fields, approximately where I have written an S in the image below.  We had to run across the field and then up a short but steep embankment onto the next rugby field.  The arrow in the lower image shows the direction we were going and the embankment is circled.  In the photo it doesn’t look very steep, but from memory the slope was more than 30 degrees.  I have always been a slow starter in races, so by that point was about at the back of the field of 200 runners.  I don’t recall where exactly we left the school grounds, but after doing so we crossed a couple of roads and then went clockwise around the nearby golf course.  From the extreme left in the image there was a fairly gentle but quite lengthy uphill stretch under trees.  That was my favorite part of the course, partly because each year I passed several boys there.  The uphill may have been gentle but was enough to punish those who had started too fast.  After we exited the golf course property we re-crossed the roads and eventually finished on the cricket field, about where I have written an F, though I don’t recall where we re-entered the school grounds and made our way to the finish.  A rough measurement on Google Maps puts the length of the course at about 3.6 miles / 5,8 km.

Best guess as to the route of our school’s cross country course.

The embankment near the start of the course.  The arrow shows the direction in which we started.

My favorite part of the cross country course.  The strip of trees looks narrower than I remembered.

A few years before the first of those cross country races our parents acquired a dog for the family, a black Lab named Roly.  (We had had another dog several years previously.)  They said that Labs needed a lot of exercise to prevent them getting fat and that we were responsible for Roly being exercised.  I don’t know whether I pestered our parents to get the dog or they decided it was a good way for me to get more exercise and stop getting any fatter, but Roly became my dog and I was the one who had to exercise him.  So most afternoons Roly and I would take long walks along the single-track paths in the nearby veld.  I don’t think there were any leash laws back in those days.  I may have used a leash for the block or so that we had to walk to get to the trails but after that I let Roly run free, often throwing a tennis ball for him to retrieve.  At about the time I turned 16, which was also about when I ran the cross country race in 10^th grade, I decided to run rather than walk with Roly.  Then at some point I started running the same route alone.  It is ironic that Roly was partly responsible for me getting more exercise and that eventually resulted in Roly getting less exercise.

The map below shows where I ran with Roly (and later by myself).  It was always the same route, out, loop (off the left edge of the image) and back.  In those days there were no roads south of the blue line.  (Even after the roads were laid it was several more years before houses were built.)  The red oval is about where the photo below was taken (also from Google Maps.)  Probably a year or two later there was a German shepherd dog at about where I’ve drawn a red X.  The dog often used to charge out into the street to try to attack me.  For a while I carried a child’s wooden baseball bat to fend off the dog, once or twice needing to give it a tap on the snout.

Route when running with Roly (and later alone)

About where the route hit the trails, with the arrow showing the direction on the outward leg

How long was the route?  Probably a little over 2 miles / 3 km.  I didn’t have a stopwatch but sometimes worked out my approximate time from an ordinary analog wristwatch.  On those occasions it was never under 15 minutes or over 20 minutes, though there was quite a bit of variability from day to day.  I probably ran most days on which I didn’t play sport at school.  Occasionally on weekends or holidays I would run the route in the late morning rather than in the afternoon (and maybe sometimes both morning and afternoon).  My times when I ran in the morning were usually slower than when I ran in the afternoon.

A few years later my parents gave me the watch in the photo.  It has a stopwatch function, with the upper button starting and stopping the second hand and the lower button being to reset it to 0.  The small dial in the lower part of the face indicates the minutes – up to 30.  Once I started doing long runs many years later I had to keep track of how many multiples of 30 minutes had elapsed.  I probably used that watch for well over 5 years, before getting my first digital watch in about 1979, well after the start of recorded history.

Seiko watch with stopwatch function.  It still works, though one of the buttons doesn’t spring back out.  I’m sure a watch repair shop could fix that easily.

After I’d been running for a year or two I came to the realization that my favorite part of rugby practice at school was when we had to run around the field a few times to warm up or cool down.


High school track

My performance in the school’s cross country race when I was in 12^th grade must have attracted the attention of the powers-that-be as it led to me having to run a few track races.  A couple of weeks after the inter-house cross country there was an inter-house track and field competition.  First there was a 3,000m race on a separate day from all the other events.  I had to run the 3,000m for my house.

All my running to that point had been in soccer boots with molded rubber studs (cleats).  The image below is the closest I could find on the web to what my boots looked like when new.  On the day of the 3,000m I lined up with the rest of the field on our school’s cinder track.  (The track has gone the way of the dinosaur.  There is no track visible on Google Maps now and so I presume the school uses a nearby municipal synthetic track.)  Tommy Dean, the school’s head groundskeeper, saw my boots and said I couldn’t run in those as they would damage his track.  I showed him the soles, which were smooth because the running I had done had worn the studs down completely.  So he let me run the race.  I have no idea what my time or position were other than that I finished somewhere in the middle of however many took part.  The next day at school a teacher who I don’t think had ever spoken to me stopped me in the corridor and said something like “You ran a disappointing race yesterday.”  I don’t think I said anything in response, partly because I hadn’t been disappointed – I hadn’t gone into the race with any expectations.  Also, I was surprised that a teacher who I didn’t know had expectations of me based on one cross country race.  I had gone through school trying to stay under the radar.  So I wasn’t quite as invisible as I had thought.

Soccer boots with molded rubber studs

On the day of the rest of the inter-house track meet I may have run a distance relay, but don’t recall what distance.

Despite the “disappointing” 3,000m I was selected to run for our school in a couple of competitions against other schools.  No-one suggested I should train with the track team, so I just continued with my usual runs.  I wouldn’t glorify them by referring to them as training.  Apart from one day when a friend, Jeremy Clampett, and I did a run from school, all my running was on my own.  Again, I don’t recall what events I ran at those track meets, though I think it may have been more 3,000m races and distance relays.  I’m fairly sure I didn’t run any solo race shorter than 3,000m.  I have no recollection of how I placed and even back then don’t think I was ever told my time for any of the events, if my times were even recorded.

At about that time I got my first pair of real running shoes.  They looked very similar to the ones in the photo below.  I wore through several similar pairs before more substantial ones became available.

My first “proper” running shoes looked much like these.  The company that became ASICS was called Onitsuka Tiger back then.

Several years later the designers of running shoes went through a phase during which they seemed to think that the thicker the sole the better.  I had a pair that may have been like the ones below or maybe had an even thicker sole.  The thick sole wasn’t very flexible and running in them was unpleasant.  Just one of the many running shoe “innovations” that didn’t really pan out.

The thicker the sole the better?  Cadbury's “First Law of Chocology” used to be “The thicker the chocolate the better.”  Thicker definitely better for chocolate, less so for soles of running shoes.

 

On to university

First year students, particularly those who would be living in dorms, were required (or maybe just requested) to arrive a week before classes started, for Freshers’ Week.  That was probably when we had to sign up for classes (no online signing up in those pre-Internet days), as well as learning how to drink irresponsibly.  (The legal drinking age in South Africa was probably 18 even back then, but I never heard of anyone being asked for proof of age.)

Towards the end of Freshers’ Week there was an intra-mural track competition.  I was persuaded to sign up for the 800m, 1,500m and 3,000m.  On the day of the meet I was starting to come down with a bad cold or the flu and so withdrew from the 800m, but not the other two races.  The 1,500m was very literally not memorable – I don’t remember what it was like or where I placed.  In the 3,000m I managed to place second to Graeme Brodrick, who was not only from my res, but had also attended my high school.  He had been a year ahead of me and had either first done his national (military) service or, if I recall correctly, spent a gap year in Australia.  Second place was much better than I had ever achieved in any type of athletic (in the broad sense) event. 

Although the Freshers’ Sports event was quite early in 1973 – late February or the beginning of March – I didn’t run another race that year.  I did continue to run when not playing other sports and usually ran with one or two other students from my res.

Our res was officially then known as Driekoppen Residence, informally known as “Belsen”, with the official name changed to Kopano after 1994 https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2011-03-23-kopano-lives-up-to-its-name).  

More on the “Belsen” nickname from https://docspike.com/download/uct-building-names-register_pdf:

The original Driekoppen was erected in 1945 near Driekoppen Inn on the De Waal Drive, Mowbray, which the Government gave to UCT as a "temporary" students residence for about 300 male ex-servicemen. When the students returned from war they were somewhat dismayed by the similarities between the accommodation that they were given and the kind of quarters at the war front which they did not want to be reminded of. It has been said "the austere bungalows surrounded by barren and dusty earth and barbed wire fencing, took their minds back to infamous prisoner-of -war camps in Germany. Because of this irony the residence immediately earned itself the name BELSEN, a name which stuck to despite objections by UCT authorities.

Source: Origins of Names of Buildings at the University of Cape Town, Mr M. Musemwa (Department of History UCT, 1993).

My first fairly regular training partner was a fellow Belsen resident, Steve Harle.  We ran together quite often in 1973 and 1974.  In 1974 I signed up for the Two Oceans (ultra) Marathon (35 miles / 56 km), which is traditionally held on the Saturday of the Easter weekend.  That was more than a little crazy because by that stage I had probably never run as far as 10 miles.  A year or two later the race introduced a qualifying standard – one had to run a (standard) marathon in under 4:15 in order to be allowed to sign up for the Two Oceans.  (The race web site doesn’t mention when the qualifying time was introduced, though it does say it was relaxed to 4:30 in 1998 and then to 5:00 in 2001.)  Considering my lack of long distance training it is probably fortunate that I developed an injury and was unable to start.  Steve asked if he could use my number and I agreed.  We were such novices in terms of running that we didn’t know that that was a no-no.  Steve hadn’t done much more training than I had but managed to get to 20 miles before dropping out.  Considering that he was running as me, it is probably good that he did not finish.  I was eventually able to run Two Oceans, in 1979, 1983, and 1984.  It is the longest race I have run and is probably my all-time favorite event.

I think Steve moved out of Belsen after 1974.  He continued to run but in 1978 he and his wife were tragically murdered by an escaped convict when they were on a hiking trip.  As 1978 is well before the Internet era Google doesn’t currently turn up anything related to their murder.  A while back a search did find a mention in a book, Ghosts of South Africa by Pat Hopkins.  From the book:

In November 1978, three schoolboys were exploring the shell when they came across the body of a woman and her dog.  Six kilometres away, a group of hikers came across a campsite, in the middle of which was the body of a man. 'Boland detectives are still "completely in the dark" today about the motive for this gruesome double murder of Mr and Mrs Steve Harle in Bain's Kloof and the whereabouts of the killers,' reported the Argus.  "We're as puzzled as you are," said Colonel Izak van der Vyver, Divisional Criminal Investigations chief in the Boland.

 

'The bodies of Mr Harle and his wife Jane, both twenty-four, were found in the Happy Valley section of Bain's Kloof on Saturday morning - more than six kilometres apart.  Mr Harle, a sixth-year medical student at the University of Cape Town, was found by mountaineers a few metres away from the small red tent the couple had pitched near Junction Pool in the Witte River.  He wore a T-shirt and shorts and had been stabbed several times.  Blood smears and a bent aluminium tent pole inside the tent were evidence of a violent struggle on the two sleeping bags.  Schoolboys found Mrs Harle's body in a corner of the desolate Spookhuis [ghost house].  She was on her back, her legs drawn up and had been stabbed twice in the left side of her chest.  Beside her was the couple's small dog Otto.  It had been stabbed between the shoulder blades.'

 

A few days later, an escaped convict, John Smith, was arrested and charged with the murders.  He was found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed.  Since the tragedy, hikers have reported seeing the ghost of a fleeing woman and her dog near what remains of the Spookhuis.

Although I signed up for Two Oceans, without getting to run it, and started at least one race, I don’t think I finished any races in 1974.  Over the years I have dropped out of a number of races, but this is the only one I am embarrassed about.  Two of the top distance runners at the University of Cape Town at that time were Dave Levick and Edward “Tiffy” King.  Dave had won the Comrades (ultra) Marathon the previous year and Tiffy later excelled at Ironman-distance triathlons.  In 1974 Dave and Tiffy decided they wanted to run a fast 3,000m.  I don’t know why they wanted to run it on the main campus rather than at the university’s track (where the Freshers’ Sports meet had been held) or at a municipal track.  A grass track was marked out on one of the rugby fields and the 3,000m race was held one evening.  One side of the field was reasonably well lit, but the order end was quite dark.  I was one of several students who decided to join Dave and Tiffy for the event.  The race got under way and soon I had drifted way back in the small field.  There were just a handful of spectators.  After a few laps I thought I was being mocked by a group of the spectators, because I was so slow and partly on account of the purple singlet I was wearing.  My (then) fragile psyche couldn’t handle the mocking, especially as I thought I was dead last, so on the dark side of the field I slunk off the track and disappeared into the night.  I later realized that I probably hadn’t been last, that Francis Thackeray may have been behind me.  He might have been one place ahead of me, in which case I need to apologize belatedly for abdicating last place to him.  Regardless of whether I was last or next-to-last, I should have completed the race.  [This memory led to me tracking down Francis, who went on to have a distinguished career as a paleontologist.  https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/research-news/2019/2019-10/new-research-supports-hypothesis-that-asteroid-contributed-to-mass-extinction.html  Although he remembers a race on a track marked out on the rugby field, he doesn’t recall any more details than I do.  Several years later when I had moved to Pretoria I sometimes ran with his brother Mike, who was a much more talented runner than Francis.  Mike has also had a very distinguished career, particularly in the field of development of lithium batteries, initially in South Africa and later in the USA.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_M._Thackeray]

 

Without having any notes or other running-related memorabilia from those early days to work from, I am unsure of exactly when some of the events described below occurred.

 Another race that I dropped out of, though I am not sure whether it was in 1974 or early 1975 was my first attempt at running a marathon.  In this case dropping out was not only justified, but unavoidable.  When I started the race one of my Achilles tendons felt very tight.  Initially I ran with a few friends.  But to try to get the tendon loosened up I pulled ahead of them.  I was feeling reasonably good when at what was probably close to 10 miles I stepped on the edge of a pothole and tore the tight tendon.  In the space of one stride I went from running quite comfortably to not being able to walk.  I don’t think I sought out medical treatment for the tendon at the time.  After a few weeks it must have healed enough that I could resume running.  The tendon continued to be tight and sore at the start of each run, though after a few minutes it would warm up and the pain would disappear.  That pattern lasted for about 10 years until another race, during which it remained painful and left me hobbling badly for days afterwards.  I did finish that race, in my all-time best for a 15km, including managing my all-time best 10km along the way.  But I needed surgery before I could run properly again.  (After the surgery in December 1984, for the first time in about 10 years I was able to run pain-free from the start of a run.  That tendon has not bothered me again since then, though the other one later also required surgery.)

I think it was also in 1974 that Tim Noakes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Noakes used to hold a running injury clinic one evening each week.  He would have been a final-year medical student at the time and so may have been able to give advice but not formally diagnose or treat injuries.  There was so little known about running and running injuries back then that a medical student with an interest in running could know as much as anyone about running injuries.  I went to see him about a knee injury.  Perhaps it was what had prevented me from starting the Two Oceans Marathon.  Tim wasn’t able to do anything for my injury, but gave me a (sealed) letter to take to another doctor, probably at the student health service.  Part of what makes me think that this was in 1974 is that he gave me a referral to someone else rather than being able to treat me.  I didn’t go to see the student health doctor and some time later decided to look at what Tim had written.  It is the one piece of memorabilia that I would most like to have kept.  In it he described me as being “totally unathletic”.  That was rather harsh, considering I had been running with some regularity for a few years by then.  On the other hand, another factor that makes me think this was in 1974 was that I hadn’t yet lost the flab that had earned the nickname “Fatty Couper” and so didn’t look much like what most runners looked like back then, before the running boom brought a wider range of body types into the sport.

In the early ‘70s Ferdie le Grange was the top marathon runner in South Africa, setting several South African records.  His final record was 2:12:47, in April 1974.  At that stage it was the fastest marathon ever run in Africa and the seventh fastest in the world that year.  After that he retired to concentrate on his final-year medical exams.  The next year he did his internship at the hospital in Port Elizabeth where my father worked.  My father wanted me to meet Ferdie to get some tips on running.  I declined, partly because I was very shy and partly because I wasn’t serious about my running.  I was just running for my own amusement rather than training with any intention of trying to improve.  Not being interested in meeting Ferdie is one of the few regrets of my life.  Being the world’s worst conversationalist, I have no idea what I would have said to him if I had met him.

First marathon

The fellow students with whom I had run most frequently must have moved out of our res at the end of 1974.  One of the new students who moved in the following year was Steve Moss, originally from Britain but whose family had moved to Botswana.  Steve and I ran together quite frequently, not going very far and often running quite late in the evening.  Later that year we both signed up for the Stellenbosch Marathon.  I think the race was officially the South African Marathon Championships for that year because it was divided into two races.  The “A” race was for those who had qualified for the championships and there was a “B” or citizen’s race for other runners.  The two races were held in the afternoon on the same course, 6 laps through the picturesque college town of Stellenbosch, with each lap including a section on the synthetic track in the university’s stadium.  The two races started at different times – I think the “B” race started 30 minutes after the main event.  At that point in the Apartheid era whites and blacks were allowed to compete against one another only in an “international” event.  Mike Tagg of Britain was invited to make the race “international” and duly won the race in 2:19:47.  (The next year South Africa was suspended from the IAAF and so international athletes could no longer be invited.)

Stellenbosch Marathon route.  I’m not sure if this was the exact route used in 1975 or if this was from some other year.  "Isotonic Game" (the race sponsor) is a sports drink.

1975 Stellenbosch Marathon T-shirt

After 5 laps of the race I needed to make a “pit stop” in the toilets deep inside the stadium somewhere.  That was already further than I had ever run and when I resumed after sitting for a few minutes my legs started cramping whenever I tried to break into a run.  So for the last lap I was reduced to walking interspersed with short attempts at running.  (That’s rather like the last several miles of my most recent marathons.)  I eventually finished in about 3:27.  I don’t think I ever knew what my official time was.  Steve was a slower runner than I was and he finished about 15 minutes later in what must have been about 3:45.  He didn’t know what his time was because the time-keepers had packed up the finish line and disappeared.  Time-keepers disappeared before 3:45 into a marathon and this the event for the “slow” runners in the “B” race?  In most marathons these days well over half the field is still out on the course at 3:45.  For instance, in the most recent marathon I ran, the 2017 Richmond Marathon, the person who ran exactly 3:45:00 placed 889 out of 4,250 finishers.

I loved that old 6-lap course.  But as the running boom started to be felt in South Africa the number of runners and the broadening race of paces made it impractical, with slower runners being lapped potentially multiple times, particularly in the year it was increased to 7 laps (I think because of construction on part of the old course).  After that it became an out-and-back race held in the morning.

 In the summer of 1975/6 (remember this is in the southern hemisphere), I had a vacation job working in a factory for 6 weeks.  I knew that I would be on my feet for long hours and so would probably be too tired to run, at least on weekdays.  That may have been the motivation to go on a crash diet.  For those six weeks I restricted myself to a few pieces of hard candy and a small evening meal each day.  I have no idea how much I weighed before I started the diet or how much weight I lost.  Although I have report cards from primary school that give my height and weight, that information is not on my old report cards from high school.  So I don’t have any record of what I weighed after I stopped growing (taller).  An interesting thing I discovered after that diet was that my stomach seemed to have shrunk and eating a normal size meal was uncomfortable for quite a while afterwards.  This was the only time in my life in which I have dieted.


Belsen Beer Race

This was the first race I won (and the only race in which I have “cheated”).

Beer mile?  A beer each lap for a single mile on a flat track?  What kind of wimpish modern event is that?  Back in the day it was 9 beers in 3 miles up and down monstrous hills.  (It was either 8 or 9 beers, I don’t remember which and using Google maps to approximate the length of the route puts it at about 2.85 miles / 4.60 km.)

I presume this race was held in each of the first three years that I was in res, but I didn’t try to take part until the 1976 edition.  At that point I reckoned that I was probably a better drinker than most of the good runners and a better runner than most of the big drinkers and so would have a reasonable shot at winning the race.

On the Google Maps image below I have indicated the approximate route.  S/F is where the race started and finished, at the front entrance to our res, and we went in a clockwise direction.  The route didn’t go through any buildings – there has been some construction in the intervening 40+ years.  The numbers 1, 2 and 3 show where we went over or under roads.  The number 1 is a pedestrian bridge just outside our res, on the way to the main campus.  Back in those days probably fewer than 5% of students used the bridge rather than just walking across the road.  I don’t recall whether we were required to use the bridge in the race.  Number 2 is at a tunnel under a large road and number 3 is another pedestrian bridge over that road.  We definitely went over that one (more about it later).  The oval that I have drawn on a field quite close to number 2 is where the 3,000m race that I dropped out of was held.  Bright daylight in the image, unlike during the 3,000m race.

A substantial number of students took part in the event, very few tried to run it, with the majority treating it as a social outing.  I wasn’t the only one who took it more seriously though.  The first of the photos below the image of the race route was at what was probably the site of the third or fourth beer, at which point I broke away from the competition.  That was shortly before we went under the tunnel marked on the map with a 2. One cannot see it clearly in the photo, but the T-shirt I am wearing is from the 1974 Two Oceans Marathon and has a cartoon of a runner trying to hitch a ride from a passing whale.  The guy in second place chugging on a beer was from Zambia and was one of the bigger drinkers.  A little further on we passed what was the Groote Schuur Zoo (which I have marked on the map as “Zoo”).  Although it had still been open a year or two previously it may have ceased operation by then.  A Wikipedia entry says it closed “sometime between 1975 and 1985”.  It definitely closed well before 1980, even though for many years after that runners referred to various routes as going past the zoo.  I found this YouTube video about the zoo:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=CkCDnhCzn9w&feature=emb_logo

Those of us who were competing were supposed to keep our beer down until we finished.  But at the point marked with an X on the map, the combination of about 6 beers and trying to run fast became too much for my stomach and I involuntarily unloaded its contents into a bush.  I was well clear of any other competitors and there were no helpers nearby to see.  So I’m admitted here (but not for the first time) that I cheated.  Just after the finish I fertilized another bush. 

Having emptied the contents of my stomach, twice not much alcohol made it into my bloodstream and so I was reasonably sober afterwards.  The same could not be said of those who treated the event as a social outing.  Because they had been walking, there had been plenty of time for alcohol to get absorbed by the time they reached the pedestrian bridge marked with a 3 and many of them were quite drunk.  At least one emptied his bladder off the bridge.  Unfortunately someone in a convertible with the top down happened to drive under the bridge at just that moment.  An official complaint was lodged, which is part of the reason the event was banned the following year and so I was unable to defend my title.  Also, by dinner time that evening many of the students were very drunk and there were big food fights in the dining hall. 

Map of the beer race route.

Breaking away from the competition

This may have been the last beer stop.  The guy holding two beer bottles is my brother Mick, who was a freshman and was helping with the event.

The pedestrian bridge at the point marked 3 on the map

I sometimes say that the reason I started running longer distances was so that I cold drink more beer without putting on weight.  But as I became fitter my tolerance for alcohol decreased and so I ended up drinking less beer.

Later that year history began

The first entry in my log book is for Monday, 5/31/1976.  That it was May 31 is not a coincidence.  (May 31 was the traditional day of the Comrades Marathon back then.  It was held on what was an annual public holiday that is no longer celebrated – Republic Day.).  On that day I ran what I wrote down as 8 miles.  I don’t have a record of the time (this was still before digital stop-watches, at least ones affordable by impecunious students), the route or who I ran with (if anyone).

The first entry for a race was for the 1976 Stellenbosch Marathon, on 9/18/1976,.  The event again had an “A” and a “B” race (this was the last time there were two separate races).  That year the “B” race was banished to the early morning and an out-and-back route mainly through the scrubby sand dunes that can be seen in the photo.  I finished in 19^th position in 3:00:09, the other three in the photo managing to get under 3 hours. 

Stellenbosch Marathon 1976.  From left to right in this little group Tony Robertson, Trevor Thorold, Yours Truly, Stephen Granger (who recently reminded me that he and the other two finished in under 3 hours).

The rest, as they say, is history.  Recorded history.

Prehistoric Running, Part 1

The prehistoric in the title has two different meanings here.  On the personal level it refers to the time before I have any written (or photographic or electronic) record of anything related to my running.  It also refers to how primitive running was in those days, especially in terms of equipment.  Not only were there no heart rate monitors, GPS devices, and other gizmos, there weren’t even digital watches.  Also, apart from spikes for running on a track, shoes designed especially for running were almost unknown.  The few people who ran used what South Africans called “tackies” (known elsewhere as tennis shoes, sneakers, or plimsolls), which consisted of a thin rubber sole and a canvas upper.

Fatty Couper

My nickname in primary school was “Fatty”.  Those who have seen me only in the past 45 years may think that was intended to be ironic.  It wasn’t.  I may not have been obese, but I was very definitely chubby.  Through primary school I was one of the tallest in my class, but I had my growth spurt early and stopped growing (upwards) when I was about 13.  At 13 I am sure I weighed more than I do today.  I lost the “Fatty” nickname in high school, not because I lost the weight but because I acquired another nickname.  I was comfortable with “Fatty” but hated the later nickname.  That’s a story for another day though.  I didn’t try to lose the flab until I was about 20.  More on that later (in part 2).

Despite being chubby I was very active.  Maybe that should be that despite being very active I was chubby.  I played a variety of sports, whether organized sports at school or just with friends.  My enthusiasm was sadly not matched by my ability.  Success at most sports requires some level of basic speed and/or strength, as well as hand-eye coordination and an ability to “read” the game, none of which I had.  For instance, in a sprint I was always the slowest kid in my class.  Even much later when I was a reasonably successful runner, little old ladies with Zimmer frames would have been able to beat me in a finishing sprint.

We’ll get to running-related development in the second installment, but first will take a long diversion into other physical activities.

Primary school sporting activities

At my primary school most of us played various school sports, whether intra-mural or against other schools.  In the two summer terms many of us played intra-mural cricket.  In the two winter terms rugby was the primary sport, with there being several rugby teams involved in inter-school leagues across various age groups.  For rugby, along with the rest of the outfit we had to have rugby boots (cleats, as they are called in the US).  Partly because I wasn’t any good and maybe partly because I was growing quite fast, my parents were not willing to buy me new rugby boots.  Instead I had to get secondhand boots from the school’s swap shop.  The secondhand boots were generally ill-fitting and very uncomfortable.  That didn’t improve my chance of playing well.

Soccer was not an official sport at our school.  The school seemed to regard it as low-class, relative to rugby,  Rugby was regarded as “a sport for hooligans played by gentlemen” whereas soccer was “a sport for gentleman played by hooligans”.  (Whoever came up with that characterization couldn’t have seen a South African rugby game.)  We were, supposedly, young gentlemen.  Although not an official sport, many of us played pick-up soccer games during recess (and pick-up cricket games or various children’s games at other times of the year).  Outside school, several of my classmates played soccer for various clubs in the city.

 For the pick-up games at school we had to supply our own equipment – bat and ball for cricket, light plastic ball for soccer – rather than using the school’s equipment.  Usually anyone who wanted to play could take part.  But there was one occasion when neither pick-up team was willing to have me for a cricket game and I was told to go away.  I was naturally very unhappy about that.  Maybe because of this I decided to bring my own equipment from home.  Then I couldn’t be left out of the game.  The other kids accepted that and I continued in that role through high school.  Perhaps they regarded me as being fairly dependable in that I always wanted to play and also never forgot to bring the equipment.

 In fifth grade I started riding my bicycle to school.  It wasn’t particularly far, about three miles in each direction, but was yet another way in which I was active.  That bicycle didn’t have gears, nor did the one I got in high school when I had outgrown the first one.  The later one had a light powered by a dynamo, so I could ride in the dark.  As those who had one will know, that kind of light shone only when the wheels were turning and even then it wasn’t very bright, certainly nothing like a modern battery-powered LED light.  I also had springy metal clips to use on the lower part of my school pants to keep them from getting greasy from the chain or other components.  I continued cycling to school through 11^th grade.  In 12^th grade I must have decided it was beneath my dignity to cycle in school uniform.  That year I rode home by bus – city bus because South Africa doesn’t have school buses.  (My mother dropped us off at our school in the mornings as it was more-or-less on her way to the school where she taught.)

Bicycle light dynamo (photo found somewhere on the Internet of one that looks in about the same condition mine would have been)

High school sporting activities

Participation in official school sport was compulsory at my high school.  There were a variety of sports to choose from, though soccer was still not one of them.  In the summer terms those of us who weren’t good enough to make one of the school teams had to play intra-mural (inter-class) cricket.  In the winter terms, if we didn’t make a team in another sport we had to run cross country.  So cross country seemed to be regarded as the sport for losers, which may be why I didn’t do that.  Instead I played for one of the lower ranked rugby teams.  I think there were 4 under-13 teams (A through D), the same number of under-15 teams, and six “open” teams (1 through 6).  In the first couple of years I played for either C or D teams.  After I aged out of those I played for the 5^th or 6^th team.  Once when there were a number of boys away for the weekend I made it up to the 3^rd team, but that was the only occasion higher than the 5^th team.  (Rugby matches against other schools were on Saturdays.) 

On the occasion when I played for the 3^rd team, despite being the slowest on the team I played on the left wing.  For those who don’t know rugby, the wings are usually the fastest players on the team.  The right wing was Paul “Pawpaw” Liesching who wasn’t just the fastest boy on the team, or even in our school, but in the whole region, having set multiple age-group records for the 100m and 200m sprints.  I once overheard a couple of girls about our age saying that Paul had very nice, shapely legs.  Several years later I saw Paul at a marathon, a distance at which I was much more successful than he was.

Among many (white) South Africans, rugby was almost a religion.  How the school’s first rugby team did was very important.  (It still is – alumni get very upset when the first team is performing poorly and are quick to try to replace what I think is now called the director of rugby.)  The whole school used to have to get together in the school hall for “Assembly” in the mornings.  The headmaster would make various announcements and then after the Jewish kids left for their own separate observance there would be a Christian prayer and hymn.  (No other religions were catered for, nor was lack of religion.)  On Mondays, if the first rugby team had won, the headmaster would say something about the victory.  If they had lost, he wouldn’t say that they had lost but instead that “We made friends”.  (Did that mean that if we had won we didn’t make any friends?)

[I don’t know if sport is still compulsory, but sport is still important.  According to the November 2020 newsletter from my old school, Grey High was ranked the “Top All-round Sports School of the Decade in South Africa.”]

Our school used to have a fives court (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fives) that later must have gone the way of the dodo, making way for new buildings.  Fives is rather like squash except that one hits the ball with one’s hand rather than with a racquet.  There wasn’t a school fives team, perhaps because no other local schools played it and so there was no-one to compete against.  I sometimes played a pick-up game of fives (and in later years pick-up games of squash).

Many of us continued to play soccer during recess.  Four days of the week we had a 20-minute recess and a one-hour lunch break.  The fifth day (Wednesdays?) we didn’t have a lunch break and school ended at 2:10 PM rather than 3:20 PM.  We played soccer in our school uniforms (as we had done for games during recess in primary school).  We were allowed to take off our blazers, but played in our long pants and the leather shoes that we part of the uniform.  In the lunch break we were supposed to end all physical exertions 15 (or maybe it was 20) minutes before the end of the break, so as not to be too sweaty when we returned to class.  I didn’t need time to eat lunch as I had always consumed my lunch surreptitiously in class several hours earlier.

Swimming

I learned to swim when I was very young.  For a while when I was in primary school my mother took me to train with a swimming club before school.  I don’t recall how many days a week that was or any other details.  I don’t even recall whether I swam in any competitions while part of that group.  Although our school had its own swimming pool, this club was at the St. George’s Park pool rather than at our school.  I don’t think I did that for very long – either I lost interest or my mother grew tired of taking me there.  During the two summer terms we had one class period each week in which we had to swim in the school pool.  In primary school it was rather frustrating for those of us who were already proficient because the whole class had to do the same thing.  We had to wear old inner tubes as flotation devices and practice kicking using wooden kickboards.  We also had to pass various life-saving exams, both oral and physical.  As part of the latter we had to learn to do “lifesaving kick” which is rather like a breaststroke kick but on one’s back and holding an object that one is pretending to rescue.  We were taught “lifesaving kick” instead of butterfly.  Butterfly is the most difficult stroke to learn, particularly for one as uncoordinated as me, and is best learned when one is young.  It still annoys me that I wasn’t taught how to do butterfly.  I can kinda sorta do it but can’t properly coordinate the arm action with the dolphin kick.  (Our daughter, on the other hand, learned it when very young and can do it beautifully or at least could do it until she suffered several shoulder dislocations while playing other sports.)

The school pool was an unheated outdoor pool, so in the early part of the season the water was rather chilly.  Also, we had to shower before and after swimming and walk through a shallow disinfectant bath on the way from the changerooms to the pool.  There was no hot water in the showers!  Apart from swimming class, on some days we were allowed to swim during lunch break or after school (but still had to shower before and afterwards).

 

South Africa switched to the metric system while I was in grade school.  At some point the school decided to change the length of the pool to meet international (metric) standards.  I don’t recall when that happened but do remember the pool being closed for a while.

In high school, through 11^th grade, we continued to have one swimming class each week in the summer terms, still with the same instructor and still without being taught butterfly.  (We didn’t have a swimming class in 12^th grade.)  I was a reasonably good swimmer, but not fast.  If I’d been able to do butterfly I’d have been able to swim the individual medley, which I think was the longest event at high school level.  Having good endurance might have compensated for my lack of basic speed.

Our high school had a very strong swimming team.  I didn’t ever try out for that team.  At the end of 11^th grade there was a swimming competition between the four classes.  As one of the better swimmers in my class, I had to swim the anchor leg of a 4-person relay.  One of the other classes had 7 boys who had represented not just our school but our province, so they had two very strong teams.  Their faster team had finished the race before I had a chance to start my leg!

Several years after I left, my old high school added long-distance open-water swimming as a school sport.  That’s something I would probably have done, because I liked being in the ocean and my flab gave me built-in buoyancy. 

Towards the end of my time in high school one of my friends, Colin Steyl, had swum 5 miles (in an Olympic size pool) as part of some fundraising effort.  (See also the “big walks” once I get to the running-related stuff in part 2.)  That sounded like an interesting challenge so I decided to do that in our backyard pool at home.  I recall that as needing about 630 laps.  A quick calculation shows that that must be about right as it assumes that the length of the pool was about 42 feet, which sounds correct.  I have no idea how long that took me.  (Aside:  Colin Steyl is an unusual enough name that a Google search doesn’t find many results, with none of them being for the right Colin and I have never been able to find what happened to him.  It is as if he disappeared off the face of the earth.)

When our family went to the beach I spent all the time in the water, body-surfing or swimming around.  That was partly because I enjoyed being in the ocean but also because I was self-conscious about my flabby belly. 

Several of my classmates belonged to surf lifesaving clubs.  Apart from providing volunteer rescue services, surf lifesaving is a competitive sport involving several different events, some entirely on the beach, such as beach sprints and “flags” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_Flags_(sport).  Others are in or on the water, such as surf ski races.  Surf lifesaving had an event called Ironman long before Ironman triathlons.  The surf lifesaving version is much shorter, though also involves multiple disciplines, usually including swimming, surf ski, and paddle board  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironman_(surf_lifesaving).  Presumably because I was a reasonably good swimmer, my classmates tried to persuade me to join one of the clubs.  I declined, mostly because getting to the beachfront regularly would have been a hassle.  I would have had to take two buses in each direction.  Driving was out of the question because in South Africa one was not allowed to drive before turning 18.  One couldn’t even get a learner’s permit before that.  Several of my friends had mopeds (49cc motorcycles, for which one could get a license at 16).  I had no interest in motorcycles and, besides, my parents would not have allowed me to get one.  That was because my father had been in a serious motorcycle accident when he was young.  He continued to need treatment on his legs for the rest of his life.  In fact, when he died the underlying cause of death listed on his death certificate was an infection from one of the wounds on his legs.

Back to other sports and physical activities

There are various areas along the coast of South Africa that have large sand dunes.  Our family sometimes picnicked near large dunes so that we could go sand-boarding.  These days it looks like one can get quite fancy boards for this.  Back in those days we would buy a thin rectangular Masonite board from a hardware store and use it without any modifications, other than waxing it (rubbing it with a candle) when the shine on the smooth side started to fade.  What comes down first needs to go up.  Sand dunes don’t have the equivalent of ski lifts, so one has to walk (or run) up the dune before one can slide down.  And in order to slide down multiple times, one gets a fair amount of exercise as a bonus.  (The photos are ones I found on the web recently or grabbed from Google Maps.)  During one vacation a friend (Phil Williams) and I camped at Van Stadens River mouth for a few days so we could have plenty of time for sand boarding.  Phil and I also each had a 50% stake in a surfboard.  I didn’t ever manage to learn to surf though, partly because I am uncoordinated and partly, as mentioned above, getting to the beach was a problem, even more so if one had to lug a surfboard.  Phil later bought out my share of the board.

Waxing a Masonite board

Riding a Masonite board.  Back in the day we didn’t pull it up that far in front.

Dunes at Van Stadens River Mouth.  The campground was to the right of the road on the right.  Some people used to walk across the pipeline on the far right to get to the dunes.  I don’t think I was ever brave enough (or coordinated enough) to do that and went the long way around, off to the left in the photo.  The mouth of the river was usually very shallow, with minimal water flowing into the ocean, so the long way wasn’t hazardous.

Sporting activities as an undergraduate

My participation in rugby and soccer didn’t end with high school.  In the first year or two at university I played both sports intramurally for my res (residence hall, i.e., dorm).  Our res had an A and a B soccer team.  When I was a freshman the A team was struggling to find a goalkeeper.  I agreed to take on that role as long as I could also play in the outfield for the B team.  At the same time I was playing for the res rugby team, which we called the Pink Panthers.  So I was playing multiple games each week.  One winter break the Pink Panthers went to what was then Rhodesia to play several games (and to socialize).  I had initially planned to be part of that tour but later backed out for some reason, maybe because I wasn’t doing very well academically and needed to spend the break trying to catch up.  Our res had a number of students from Rhodesia and also later a few from Zambia, Malawi and Botswana.  These were all white students, this being at the height of the Apartheid era.  I’m not sure whether I lost interest first or these teams faded away when key players graduated or moved out of the res, but I don’t remember the teams continuing to function in my later years there.

Apart from more formal rugby games, several of us also used to play pick-up touch-rugby games on the cricket field opposite our res.

Beyond the regular kinds of sports, at university there were opportunities to try more exotic pursuits.  “Rag” is a tradition at many South African (and British) universities Rag (student society) - Wikipedia.  One focus of Rag is on raising money for charity.  Another focus is on having fun, in a wide variety of events, usually culminating in a procession through the city center, with decorated floats, including one for the Rag Queen and her two princesses.  (I wonder if this is no longer politically correct, though Rag was certainly never about political correctness.)  The procession  was also part of the fundraising, with students collecting money from spectators.

One of the events in the “Rag Olympics” involved tobogganing down Jammie Steps, the steps in front of what used to be called Jameson Hall (now the Sarah Baartman Memorial Hall).  The event is a relay.  The first person in the team starts at the bottom – the sidewalk at the bottom of the photo below of the steps – runs up the steps with the toboggan, touches the top step with a foot and dives off, hopefully on top of the toboggan, and thus down the steps, where the next team member is waiting his (or her) turn.  The black and white photo shows someone in action during the race.  This “sport” is rather dangerous and there has been at least one fatality.  I was never brave enough to enter the race but did go down the steps a few times – starting off lying on the toboggan rather than diving onto it.  

Jammie Steps – the steps used for the toboggan races (photo captured from Google Maps)

Tobogganing down Jammie steps (photo found on the Internet)

Another Rag Olympics event was a pram (baby-jogger) race, a relay from downtown Cape Town to the campus.  This was before real baby-joggers had been invented, so most of the prams were contraptions built by engineering students.  The “baby” was usually the lightest female student who was willing to risk her life.  (Somewhat surprisingly, considering the era, most of the “babies” in the photo are wearing helmets.)  I competed in this event once.  From what I am wearing in the photo it must have been in my second year.  I am the one with a white headband.  The top I am wearing looks like it is the one our Pink Panthers rugby team wore.  Rag is early in the year and as rugby is played in the middle of academic year this photo couldn’t have been from my first year.  I recognize at least one other person.  The guy behind the pram on the far left is Roger Cameron, who was captain of the cross country team.  The one in the white T-shirt behind me may be Damien Burger, in which case that was another team from our res.  Behind the pram on the far right might be Peter Whipp, who was one of the best rugby players in the area and later that year played for the Springboks (the national rugby team) against the touring British Lions.

Waiting for the start of the pram (relay) race, from downtown Cape Town to the university.  Solly Kamer’s was a chain of liquor stores, bottle stores as they are known in South Africa.  At the time even beer and wine could be sold only in bottle stores, not in supermarkets or other stores.

Not a Rag event, but a more serious one, or at least one that some teams took seriously, was a pedal car race.  There was a university pedal car race series to which several major universities sent teams with very sophisticated cars.  If I recall correctly, each event lasted for 6 hours.  I don’t remember how many were on each team.  It may have been six.  The report below doesn’t provide information about either the duration or the number in a team.  The top teams not only had good cars and very fit drivers, they had well trained pit crews.  Their driver changes were slick operations – the incumbent being dragged out of one side of the car while the next driver hopped in from the other side.  (I think drivers had to change after each lap.)  The race at the University of Cape Town was around the university’s administration building, Bremner Building, in one of the images below.  Several of us from our res managed to get a hand-me-down car from one of the teams of engineering students.  In the race the car developed various mechanical issues.  For instance, it had 10 bicycle-style gears but after an hour or two something failed and we were stuck in one gear for the rest of the race. 

A report on the pedal car race

 

Yours truly in action.  “Playaway” was the name of our sponsor.

View of the side of our car at rest, with some of the faster cars in the background.  “Belsen” was the nickname of our res, a name given by students who had fought in the Second World War (more about that in part 2).

Bremner Building, University of Cape Town

BTW, the image of Bremner Building, from Google Maps, reminded me that I still have the proceeds from my life of crime.  I presume the statute of limitations has expired and it is safe to mention this.  See the name of the street running top to bottom on the right in the photo above?  See the sign in the photo below?  Put two and two together.  IMHO, for a street with that name it was rather careless of the authorities to use a sign that could be unbolted so easily.  Alcohol may also have been involved, that road being on the way home from the Pig ‘n Whistle.

Proceeds from my life of crime