Sthembiso Mkhize is so scared of running his first Comrades Marathon on Sunday that he has had nightmares of being left behind at the finish line by his teammates.
The Oyster Box Hotel finance administrators dream of running his first ultramarathon was almost shattered by a car accident in March. He suffered severe lacerations, lower back injuries and upper-body internal trauma that kept him in hospital for a week and unable to train for more than a month.
Mkhize, 42, says the pressure of making his ancestors proud he is the first one in his family to take up long-distance running and support from Gijima.com, an athletics community, pushed him to run the 85.77km alongside 22,000 other entrants from Durban to Pietermaritzburg this year.
