Meiringspoort Half Marathon & 10km

The Meiringspoort 21.1 km was the brain child of a group of women runners who took to the farm roads in the early mornings way back in 1993.

The first race was held on the 23rd of October in that same year. The entry fee was R18 and a temporary license a meagre R8. 310 athletes took part in this race, 286 finishing within the cut off time.

During the first three years Isaac Opperman from Wellington was the winner. The route record, 1:04:06 set by him in 1994, has not been improved since.

Previous winners include Principal Fana, Lindile Tokota, Jan Frieslaar and Friedel Maans.

The committee has had its fair share of challenges; one of which was the engagement of athlete Rampie Mulder from Witbank to Louise Norton that took place at the Waterfall during the race in 2002. Rampie secretly arranged to organize flowers for his bride to be at the finish. And was she overwhelmed!!

In 2006 the 10km was presented for the first time with 203 participating athletes. This race had grown more than four fold in recent years and in future numbers are going to be limited.

Bruce Fordyce took part in 2009 and wrote an article afterwards. He was pleasantly surprised to see that De Rust wasn’t the one horse town he remembered since his army days. Bruce has indicated that he wants to join in our celebrations next year when the race will have been presented for two decades.