Why would anyone want to go through the pain, discomfort and psychological exhaustion of participating in a long-distance endurance race for 48 hours?

For Tegan Edwards from Waterkloof in Pretoria, the answer is very easy, short and sweet – “I like challenges,” she told Rekord on Sunday afternoon, about half an hour before the end of her successful 48-hour adventure.

Edwards tackled two South African long-distance endurance race records at the same time this weekend and she was successful in improving both.

She first improved the well-known Hazel Moller’s record of 191km over 24 hours by six kilometres when she ran 197km in the same time. After that, she kept running to also broke Molley Delainey’s record of 242km over 48 hours by covering more than 261km in the same time.

Although these new records have yet to be officially confirmed, both the representatives of athletics authorities who monitored the event, Peter Muyeni from Athletics Gauteng North (AGN), and Pieter de Jager from Athletics South Africa (ASA), told Rekord that it was just a formality.

Muyeni oversaw the event as official referee on behalf of AGN, while De Jager, chairman of ASA’s technical committee, had to officially calibrate the track Edwards was running on around the Irene Cricket Oval to legalize the record attempt.

Derrick Chamberlain from Chamberlain’s Timekeeping made sure that her time was closely monitored and that the rounds Edwards completed were carefully counted.

Speaking of the track, although Edwards is a member of the Phobians Running Club in the East of Pretoria, she and her team chose the Irene Oval to take on this record attempt.

According to Edwards, it was a great choice, not only for strategic and technical reasons, but she was also pleasantly surprised with the support and help she received from the community of Irene in Centurion. She was supported by a team from Phobians Athletics Club, which made it possible for her to sleep less than 4 hours over the period of the record attempt in a caravan on site, while also consuming small amounts of food several times.

The distance that Edwards travelled in 48 hours means that she would have passed Kroonstad by Sunday afternoon at 15:00 if she had left Pretoria at 15:00 on Friday afternoon and followed the N1 highway.

The challenges of long-distance racing are no novelty for Edwards. After all, she has completed the Comrades marathon four times (three times in less than 9 hours), while she can also tick off the boxes of ultra-races such as the Two Oceans, several other ultra-marathons and some 100-mile races.

Edwards is a former professional tennis player, who still earns her living as a tennis coach. However, running and specifically long-distance road races are her other great love and if it depends on her, we will hear a lot more about this energetic young lady and her running adventures in the future.

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