As he did when tackling the Comrades Marathon, Bruce Fordyce first took the measure of the larger than usual New Dawn gathering, decided this was something he could ace and proceeded to win over his audience with anecdote after story after inspiring message.
Bruce turned out to be one of the best speakers the club has had. He is a very funny man and spoke about his life as an ultramarathon runner in anecdotes, which often had the gathering in stitches.
Bruce introduced his latest book, Winged Messenger, published earlier this year. They had decided to publish it themselves and when he asked his wife what she thought the print run should be, she said: 50 copies. A friend recommended being bold and having 500 copies printed.
The book has sold more than 7000 copies to date, Bruce said proudly. In South African publishing terms that's a runaway bestseller and he managed to sell quite a few more copies to club members and guests.
The theme of the book is how to run your first Comrades Marathon.
"I say to first time runners that the person you are today is not the person you'll be on the day after the race. It changes you."
His first time he managed to finish the race quite well and did a few more while he was at Wits University, saying that the only training he did in those days was "running after the fairer sex on campus. But I started to have an inkling that I could be good at this thing and started training seriously."
That led to his first win of a record nine Comrades victories. It was his 5th attempt at the race, having come respectively third and second in the preceding two races.
"You have to run at between 3.30 and 3.35 minutes per kilometres to win. The reason I was so successful is that I chose my parents well. It's genetic."
Amid all the seriousness he told a story about how he'd met the Queen on her state visit to South Africa in 1995. He'd been involved with a sports development programme that the then John Major government had funded and was invited to a function at the British High Commission in Pretoria attended by Queen Elizabeth II.
He told how she had entered the room and he said with tongue firmly in cheek "our eyes locked ... mainly because we're the same height". She unexpectedly stopped in front of him and asked what he does. When he said he's a ultramarathon athlete, she said: "I always thought marathon runners were big and strong."
It was nevertheless a special moment, said the Hong Kong born Fordyce.
He pointed out that in his heyday there was no prize money for winning the Comrades, just a gold (plated) medal. These days the winner (which he was nine times) gets R500 000 and if you break the record you get R1 million (which he did five times).
His Comrades icon remains the veteran five times Comrades winner Wally Hayward, who completed the race in 1988 in about 9 hours 45 minutes, beating more than half the field in the process. He ran again the following year just before his 81st birthday, completing the race just under two minutes inside the cut-off time, making him the oldest runner ever to complete the race.
Fordyce arrived at the club wearing a black T-shirt with a purple jacaranda tree printed on it, with two hadedas underneath the tree and told how he enjoys wearing that shirt when visiting expat friends in places like Australia who, he says, often burst into tears at the sight of it and start dreaming of biltong and the like.
His best advice to Comrades runners, he said, is that when you get to the stage when you know you are going to be able to complete the race, or better still win it, (like at the top of Polly Shorts on the up run), "freeze the moment and remember it forever. That's the spirit of the Comrades."
"Winning (the race) is the most fabulous feeling of all time, particularly if you have a good lead." This he did an astonishing eight times in succession between 1981 at his third attempt, until 1988. He won his ninth race in 1990 and carried on competing until 2012, finishing 30 races in total.
He is especially proud of having helped to introduce Parkrun to South Africa, a series of free, timed 5 km runs/walks held weekly all over the world and which already has registered 1.3 million South Africans.
Next Week: The theme of the meeting next week is polio with speakers including Prof Lucille Blumberg, Paul Ksango telling about his experience of being married to Susan, who contracted polio as a child in Kenya, and PDG Stella Anyangwe.
The following week marks the 70th birthday of President Julian Nagy and there will be a celebration at the Nagy home in Craighall Park instead of the regular Wednesday morning meeting. Details to follow.
The invitation for the festive Dinner at Marks Park will be going out soon, so make a note in your diary for Saturday, 3 December, the final New Dawn gathering of the year.
A Thought for the Week: I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart, and that is softness of head. - Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919)
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