Wheels4Life

Wheels4Life fever is catching on: Accenture employee Tumi Mphahlele was so taken back by the efforts of the recent W4L charity cycle, that she has opted to run her 2nd Comrades ultra-marathon in support of the W4L charity. It is an honour to have athletes outside of the cycling community doing their bit to provide wheel chairs for the less previlidged in our communities.

Below is a bio of Tumi, and her athletic achievements:

Tumi Mphahlele started running in 2003 to improve her fitness and has been running recreationally since then. Her focus was initially on short distances and has ran a personal 10km best of 52 minutes and a half-marathon best of 01:56. In 2007 she completed her first marathon in Soweto and proceeded to ultra-distance in 2008. She has since completed a number of ultra marathons, some more famous ones including 2 Loskop Ultras, two Two-Oceans Ultras, one Om-die-Dam and one Comrades Marathon. Tumi is currently running for Ukhozi Athletics Club in Soweto and is hoping to complete her second Comrades this year.

About the Comrades Marathon (taken from wikipedia and www.comrades.com):
Athletes that are running the Comrades Marathon have 12 hours to complete the course. This was extended from 11 hours in 2003. There are a number of cut-off points along the routes which runners must reach by a prescribed time or be forced to retire from the race.
A runner who has successfully completed 9 marathons wears a yellow number, while those who have completed 10 races wear a green number, which is permanently allocated to the runner for all future races.
Medals are awarded to all runners completing the course in under 12 hours. Medals are currently awarded as follows:
• Gold Medals: The First 10 men and women.
• Wally Hayward Medals (Silver centred medal circled by gold ring) : 11th position to sub 6hrs 00min
• Silver Medals: 6hrs 00min 01sec to sub 7hrs 30min.
• Bill Rowan Medals (Bronze centred medal circled by silver ring) : 7hrs 30min to sub 9hrs 00min.
• Bronze Medals: 9hrs 00min to sub 11hrs 00min.
• Vic Clapham Medals (Copper Medal): 11hrs 00min to sub 12hrs 00min.
The Comrades Marathon Back-to-Back medal was introduced in 2005 and is awarded to Comrades Marathon runners who complete their first two runs in succession (typically an “Up” and a “Down”). This additional medal is awarded at the end of the second run – in other words, Back-to-Back runners receive 2 medals at the end of their second run to make a total of 3 medals in 2 years.

To sponsor Tumi on her 89km ultra run please click on the backabuddy logo below, all donations will go direct the W4L fund via the backabuddy sponsorship website:

Click to Tumi's sponsorship page