Port Elizabeth, South Africa – With back-to-back SPAR 10km Challenge victories under her belt, Irvette van Zyl has a slender lead on the Grand Prix points table after the second race in the five race series.
Van Zyl who won the Cape Town and Port Elizabeth races, has 40 points. She is followed closely by the defending champion, Lebogang Phalula, who has 37 points, after finishing third in Cape Town and second in Port Elizabeth. Christine Kalmer and Nolene Conrad are in joint third position, with 29 points. Kalmer was fifth in Cape Town and eighth in Port Elizabeth, while Conrad was seventh and sixth in the two races.
Van Zyl, who won the Grand Prix in 2010 and 2011, said she was pleased to be in the lead, but there was a lot of work to do.
“I haven’t been able to break my last year’s time to get bonus points,” she said.
“The conditions in Port Elizabeth were against recording a fast time, and I had run the London Marathon two weeks before the race. I think we have all been focusing on other events – the SA championships were just before the Cape Town race, and several of us ran marathons shortly before the Port Elizabeth race,” said Van Zyl.
“A lot of us have been trying to qualify for the Olympic Games in Rio, either on track or on the road. But I think it will be very exciting when we run in Durban, because we will all have had a break, and things will be more even. I think that is where we will all be trying to break last years times and get that crucial advantage in the Grand Prix.”
Three of the junior runners who are being mentored by the six Grand Prix winners are among the top 20 in the open category on the Grand Prix ladder.She also heads the junior category, with 20 points. Ashleigh Simonis, who has been partnered with Lebogang Phalula, is in 13th place, with seven points, and Chery-Lee, who is being mentored by three times Grand Prix winner Rene Kalmer, is in 18th place, with four points. Simonis and Van der Merwe are in joint second position on the junior ladder, with 187 points each.
KPMG heads the club standings, with 139 points, followed by Boxer with 121 and Nedbank with 77.
The next race is in Durban on June 5.
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