The night before Comrades is a particular kind of quiet in Durban. Along the beachfront and in the hotels closest to the start, 21,633 runners are managing the impossible: trying to sleep with 85.777 kilometres of tomorrow already present in their bodies as anticipatory weight. Shoes are laid out. Drop bags are checked. The forecast — 15°C at the start, warming to 21°C by Pietermaritzburg — has been studied, revised, and studied again.
Tomorrow morning, the gun fires at Durban City Hall on Dr Pixley Ka Seme Street. The 99th Comrades Marathon begins. The 50th official Up Run.
The Comrades Marathon has been running since 1921, started by Vic Clapham as a memorial to fallen soldiers of the First World War and preserved ever since by the peculiar South African conviction that the right response to adversity is to run uphill for most of a day. The Up Run — from the coast at Durban to the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands at Pietermaritzburg — happens in odd-numbered years, alternating with the Down Run. This is 2026. This is the Up Run.
The Big Five
The Comrades route's narrative is organised around its climbs. The Big Five — Cowies Hill, Fields Hill, Botha's Hill, Inchanga, and Polly Shortts — are not the only testing sections of the 85-kilometre course, but they are the ones that structure a runner's day, serve as split-time reference points, and function as psychological landmarks.
Cowies Hill arrives first, roughly 10 kilometres into the race, when legs are fresh but pacing is everything. The early momentum of a mass start tends to push runners too hard here. Cowies Hill is where the race separates the disciplined from the hopeful.
Fields Hill follows through Pinetown's sprawling suburban approaches. It is steeper and longer than Cowies, and arrives at the point in the race where the opening kilometres' investment begins to declare itself in real time. Fields Hill has broken more Comrades dreams than any other single location on the route.
Botha's Hill and Inchanga deliver the race's middle stretch — rolling, relentless, and further from both the start and the finish than feels comfortable. By Inchanga, at roughly 65 kilometres, runners are deep into the territory where the race becomes internal. The remaining distance is known. The remaining capacity to cover it is the question.
Polly Shortts arrives last, with approximately 10 kilometres remaining, at the point when every remaining athlete is already running on whatever reserves they can produce. It is not the longest climb. It is not the steepest. It is the most feared because it comes when the body's response to gradient is most honest. The Comrades course has been designed across a century to produce exactly this confrontation: the final major climb when everything that was not genuine has already been exhausted.
The Women's Race: Steyn's Pursuit
Gerda Steyn has won the Comrades Marathon in the last three Up Runs and Down Runs respectively. She does not have four consecutive victories at this race. She has the three wins and the form that makes four consecutive not just possible but probable.
The arithmetic is unusual enough to note: Steyn's Comrades record is already among the most impressive in the race's history, and a fourth consecutive title this year — paired with a fifth overall — would position her in the conversation with the race's all-time great women's performers. She arrives in Durban having trained specifically for the Up Run's demands: sustained climbing pace, not the flatter Down Run rhythm. The Big Five are her terrain.
The field behind her does not lack quality. But Steyn at a Comrades start line is one of those sporting certainties where the question is less about whether and more about by how much.
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Join ZealZagFollow us on InstagramThe Men's Race: An Open Stage
The men's race enters tomorrow without the clarifying certainty that characterises the women's side. Piet Wiersma won the 2025 Up Run — his first Comrades title — and defends that result tomorrow as the field's most recent champion on this specific course direction. An Up Run specialist, Wiersma's performance last year demonstrated the particular climbing patience that the Big Five require: contained in the first half, patient through the middle section, capable of sustained effort over Polly Shortts when the other contenders are deepest in their reserves.
Against him stands Tete Dijana, a three-time Comrades champion whose experience of the race is unmatched in the current field. Dijana's Comrades record combines results across both directions, and his familiarity with the Up Run's specific rhythm — the way the Big Five accumulate rather than individually break athletes — gives him tactical depth that no other current competitor can match.
Edward Mothibi and Nikolai Volkov add further contention. Joseph Manyedi's consistency across multiple Comrades entries makes him a factor throughout the second half.
No single man has the kind of form-and-history advantage that Steyn holds in the women's race. Tomorrow, on the road from Durban, that open contest produces something the women's race may not: genuine uncertainty through to the final kilometres.
What the Conditions Mean
The weather forecast for a Comrades Up Run is always the most scrutinised data point of the week. Too hot in the valley approaches to Pietermaritzburg, and the race becomes attrition. Rain on the higher sections adds weight and cold to athletes already working at maximum sustainable output. Wind on the exposed plateau sections past Botha's Hill can add minutes to competitive times.
Tomorrow's forecast — 15°C minimum at the Durban start, 21°C maximum arrival temperature in Pietermaritzburg — is what the race organisation describes as ideal. The gradient from coast to Midlands carries athletes from sea-level humidity into higher, drier, cooler air as the day progresses. In these conditions, the race is run on its own terms: gradient and fitness, not weather management.
What to Watch
The Comrades Marathon's time cutoffs are 12 hours. Athletes who do not reach the Pietermaritzburg finish within that window receive an official DNF, regardless of position on the road. The cutoff is not an elite racing concern; it is the majority of the field's primary objective. Somewhere among the 21,633 runners who line up tomorrow morning, thousands are attempting their first Comrades, or their first Up Run, or are running for a specific time qualification: the coveted green number (10 finishes), the blue number (25 finishes), the legendary double green (10 medals, both directions).
For the elite athletes, watch the split times at Botha's Hill. In recent Up Run editions, the leader through Botha's Hill at 60 kilometres has won 7 of the last 10 finishes. It is not the decisive section — Polly Shortts makes that claim — but it is the forecasting section. The athlete who arrives at Botha's Hill's crest with sustainable pace and a lead has structured their day correctly.
For how to plan your own Comrades experience — running it, supporting it, or witnessing it — see our Comrades Marathon running guide. For today's coverage from the UCI MTB World Cup in Leogang, see our Leogang DHI field report.