By Di Rixon

First of all, I’d like to congratulate our members who tackled the Otter Trail Run at the beginning of the month.  That was running up and down steep hills for 42ks, swimming across rivers and climbing over sharp rocks with a 150m floating wooden bridge to negotiate prior to the “Finish”.  So “well done” to Jeff Shapiro and Rudy Horn-Botha who ran in the heat and Tim Bellairs and Joe Tyrell who ran in the rain the whole way!

Congratulations also to two  of my many  excellent Marshals at “The Grape Run” - Erik Westwig,  who ran a 3:40 at the Chicago Marathon a few weeks ago and Denis Rowan who ran a Gun Run 21k PB of 1:52 knocking 20 minutes off his best half marathon time from earlier this year!

Jana Trojan who runs in the Womens 40+ age category has been achieving some very good results over the past few months and is certainly finding her previous good form.  Some of her recent achievements have been 4^th 40+ at the Gun Run 21k in a time of 1:34:07  and part of the winning Ladies” Team; 1:21:01 at the Satori Camel Run and, once again, part of the winning Ladies”Team;  Jana ran a 43:58 at the Cape Town Marathon 10k and came 8^th Senior at the Grape Run!  Surely a Bronze Takkie recipient in the not too distant future?

Another member back to his “old form” must be Roger Dixon.  What a pleasure to see those long legs striding out and clocking up superb times again!  Roger ran a 35:10 at the Cape Town Marathon 10k and a 35:09 at the Medihelp Takkie 10k and WON the Whale 21k in Hermanus in a time of 77 minutes!  His Grape Run over the past weekend was also impressive, he ran an 81 minute 21k and it’s A VERY TOUGH RACE!

Now we come to a truly awesome run from one of our members.  When you are an elite athlete and your times are amongst the best of your piers it becomes extremely difficult to get any faster.  Tebello Poni ran a PB of 12 minutes to achieve 2:20 at the Cape Town Marathon – a staggering feat at that running level!  He also came in 5^th Senior in the Grape run in a time of 71 minutes.

However, the winner of the Bronze Takkie tonight is Pamela Mtshemla.  She has been coached and encouraged by Bulelani Bheba who looks after all our juniors and trains them in Khayelitsha and manages to get them all to Races and Cross country meetings timeously!  (Bhulelani is an excellent runner himself having come 8^th Senior in the Gun Run 21k in 1:13:46 and also ran a 33:42 Cape Town Marathon 10k.) Pamela, having run an excellent Cross Country Season, where she normally won her age category race at the various League Meetings, achieved a Silver Medal at Western Province Cross country champs and a Bronze Medal at South African Cross Country champs.  Pamela is regularly featuring in the prize money at 10k races held over the past few months.  At the Gun Run 10k she was 1^st Junior in a time of 38:43, at the Cape Gate 10k she came 4^th Senior, 1^st Junior in a time of 39:02.  This is the start of a most promising running career and we are very proud to present this award to a great athlete of the future – Pamela Mtshemla.