Hope with every step - #MondayMotivation
What’s that old saying about motivation being like taking a bath? Something about having to do it everyday in order for it to work. The same is true for running. Anyone who has ever trained for anything from a neighbourhood 5km race to the punishing Soweto Marathon knows that running rewards consistency. For those who find consistency elusive, motivation (or a lack thereof) is often the scapegoat that must answer when results don't. But in a few rare cases, running itself is the motivation on the long road to a goal that requires consistent effort.
This is the case for Peteni Khuzwayo and Kabelo Mabalane. As the first black man to appear on the cover of Runner’s World magazine back in 2008, Bouga Luv’s transformation from overweight Kwaito star to a Comrades Marathon Bill Rowan medalist is the sort of inspiring page-turner to be found in the self-help section where his own book should be. But his autobiography is in the running section. Entitled I Ran For My Life, the memoir is a personal account of a young man consumed by the excesses of stardom who saves his own life by turning away from addiction to embrace running.
He's doing it again. Only this time the man of TKZee fame is running to save the lives of others. As the Coronavirus lockdown wore on week after agonising week, KB and his business partner Khuzwayo were most concerned about the children who faced starvation because the only meal they received was at school. Covid-19 had forced schools and their daily feeding schemes to shut down. “I think even before we went to lockdown millions of South Africans were going to bed without eating every night. But now because of lockdown, that age group between 1 and 7 years old, most of those kids only ate when they went to school. For me it hit home because I have kids and I tried to imagine what I would do if my kids couldn’t eat. So we partnered with an organisation called JAM (Joint Aid Management) to help,” Mabalane explains.
Kabza and Peteni have been running for 15 days. 35km a day for 17 days through heat, pain and exhaustion to raise R6 million to feed hungry children. So whenever the berg winds become too hot and dry on their epic journey from Joburg to Durban, Khuzwayo tries to remember why they set out from Old Mutual’s Head Office on the 7th of September to begin with: “it’s tough. But every time I wanna give up I remember that every step that I am taking adds in a very small way to giving a kid a future.”
A noble cause which gives new meaning to why we run. Motivation comes in the morning. www.hopewitheverystep.com is where you can keep the guys motivated.