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Adriaan Wildschutt is hard at work in Potchefstroom as he fine-tunes his preparations for the Absa Run Your City Gqeberha 10km, set to take place in Nelson Mandela Bay on 1 March.
Adriaan Wildschutt is hard at work in Potchefstroom as he fine-tunes his preparations for the Absa Run Your City Gqeberha 10km, set to take place in Nelson Mandela Bay on 1 March.
With just a few weeks to go, the American-based Olympian is once again the headline act in the popular road running series and is targeting a sub-27-minute performance.
Wildschutt enjoyed a memorable outing at the same race last year, when he smashed the national 10km record in 27:28, earning more than R200 000 for his outstanding run.
However, his record stood for only a few months after Maxime Chaumeton lowered the South African mark to an impressive 26:55 in Romania in October.
Chaumeton’s coach, Hendrick Ramaala, believes the record will be extremely difficult to break, especially on home soil.
“That run by Chaumeton is one for the ages. It’s nearly impossible to break it here at home or anytime soon, for that matter. It will take something really special to do so, and it will be even harder to achieve locally,” said Ramaala, a four-time Olympian and former New York City Marathon winner.
Wildschutt based his training camp in the North West province last year and benefited from two pacemakers when he broke the record in the Friendly City in front of his family.
Despite the historic run, he was not entirely satisfied with the pacing and believes he is capable of going even faster.
Fresh from a 13th-place finish — the highest by a South African — at last month’s World Cross Country Championships in Florida, USA, Wildschutt says he is confident his preparations are on track.
“The training camp in Potchefstroom is going well. There are just a few weeks to go before the Gqeberha 10km, and everything is coming together nicely,” he said.
The goal is a fast time, as Wildschutt looks to better his previous performance. The former World Senior Championships finalist, who secured a top-10 finish in Tokyo last year, has mapped out a solid four-week training block in the North West before returning to the United States in about six weeks’ time.
Whether he can reclaim the national record or dip under his debut time from last year remains to be seen, but all signs point to another exciting showdown on the streets of Gqeberha.
