GLENROSE Xaba could well have pulled out of last weekend’s Sanlam Cape Town Marathon at which she achieved the amazing feat of breaking the South African Marathon record on debut in the 42.195km distance.
Xaba beat a stellar international field to break the finish tape in a very fast and beautiful time of two hours, twenty two minutes and twenty two seconds (2:22:22). That was a good minute and 19 seconds faster than the national mark previously held by the revered Gerda Steyn.
Yet, unbeknownst to all but those close to her, the lass from Mpumalanga ran the race with a heavy heart – worried as she was about the ill-health of someone very close to her.
“When we were about to leave for Cape Town, her family called her and told her that her grandmother was very unwell. She’d not been well but it seemed like she’d gotten worse. I offered her that we cancel going to the race if she needed to go see her. But she said she needed to run for her,” her coach and mentor Violet Semenya reveals.
And run for her granny she did, Xaba producing a marathon debut so compellingly stunning the likes of which we are unlikely to ever see again.
“That she could shine as she did”, Semenya says, “talks to Xaba’s drive and mental strength”. But more than that, the record is just rewards for an athlete so dedicated to her craft that making sacrifices has become part of her nature.
“You know, people normally say festive periods are the time to be with families. But it has not been that way for Glenrose. For the last five years she’s been spending three weeks of the festive periods in Limpopo - a foreign province for her just so she could get training.
“But because she is so dedicated, she has not complained about being in a rural place that does not have many things and a place where the coolest temperature is usually 30 degrees celcius.
“She has trained in those harsh conditions and that is what has helped make her the strong athlete that she is.”
And this year when she began doing the marathon training, Violet and her partner the revered Olympian Caster Semenya knew that Xaba had it in her to do something special in Cape Town after they’d agreed on the contract with the race organisers.
“She was running the 31s (31 minutes in the 10km SPAR Grand Prix and Absa Run Your City Series) with a marathon programme and we knew that if she could put the 10ks in between the long run programme she would do well in the marathon.”
They went to Cape Town, the bad news about Xaba’s gogo notwithstanding, confident she would break the national record but wisely opted to not announce their intentions lest something went wrong.
“From the long runs that she was doing, when we calculated her times it was giving us the SA record, but we did not say it just in case the body did not respond. From her 40(km) and 38(km) and 35(km) runs we could see that distance was not going to be a problem.”
On race day, Xaba delivered although it did not look like she would early on. Semenya remembers panicking a little early on – the night before having been a bit of a nightmare with some serious storming among the training group that was out in the Mother City to support Xaba as the pre-race nerves took over.
“We’d had some fights as a group, little arguments about whether the nutrition bottles were ready or properly marked - you know the usual struggles that precede a big race. But we were all nervous and my worry was that we would not affect her.
“And then the first 10k did not go according to the way we wanted and I must credit the pace-setter for helping turn things around. We wanted to go 34 minutes the first 10k and then another 34 high. But the first ten was 35 (minutes) and I had the commentators saying it was windy out there. We hoped for the second half of the race to be faster and the pacer tried to bring the time back because he knew ‘this girl can run’.”
And she did run, Xaba entering her name into South African running folklore by setting the national record on her marathon debut.
Semenya is delighted because she believes this is going to be a game changer, particularly for black female runners.
“I think where you see yourself and introspect and realise you are talented and a lot of people are looking up to you and you are a motivation to many that changes you for the better. And she has always wanted to see herself in Caster’s shoes as a role model for others and having Caster next to her helped her take this running thing much more seriously and she has shown that if you sacrifice, you get the results. She is going to be a positive change for the black women that we have in the sport. Glenrose is a huge role model to many young black girls and in our camp she really leads by example. I often leave to lead the morning training sessions when I am off to work and she is always the first one up and she wakes the others and conducts the session.”
Semenya says Xaba will continue running track and the shorter distances because they will help her with her speed in the marathon: “She’s a very versatile athlete. She will still do the 10s and 21s and the track, after all it will help her to maintain that speed. She just needs to be smart in running locally and internationally. We will go to races where she can break her 10 ks and 21s PBs and then we will go to some races in Europe for best times.”
No doubt invitations to international marathons are going to come and Xaba and her team will pick and choose their races carefully.
“For next year she will have the World Championships in both the half marathon and the full marathon so we will sit down when she comes back and plan for the new realities of her career.”
And they are beautiful realities for a talented athlete who has put in all the hard yards and made huge personal sacrifices that see her now being on top in her chosen career. You bet her granny, unwell as she is, is super proud of her.