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South Africa's Comrades Marathon, linking Durban and Pietermaritzburg, describes itself as the oldest ultra-marathon in the world, stretching for about 55 miles through KwaZulu-Natal province.

These next six months, Walmsley plans to take on ultrarunning’s two biggest races: South Africa’s 55-mile Comrades Marathon and the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, or UTMB, a 106-mile mountainous trek through the Alps.

He struggled for most of the next decade and had one last surge of greatness to win the 55-mile Comrades Marathon in South Africa in 1994, at age 34.

Cheryl Winn, who chairs the Comrades Marathon Association, says the run is about “the power of the human spirit.”

I fell a day behind, which means I’ll have to run two marathons on the last day, it’s called the Comrades Marathon – 56 miles in a day is what I’m going to attempt.