Julian Drew : Athletics
Hendrick Ramaala is on a roll at the moment. He followed up his fourth place at the world half marathon championships and victories in the Great North Run and South African half marathon championships with a win in the Rennes 10km in France at the weekend.
But while he appears to be winning top class road races at will and collecting some fairly decent prize money along the way, for Ramaala it is all just a small part of his long-term plan.
The greater scheme of things for Ramaala is to become a world-class marathon runner and the long-term plan was set as far back as the winter of 1994 when he was still an unknown outside his own province. Ramaala had finished second in the Transvaal cross country championships and dominated the league races and was looking forward to a good South African championships, but food poisoning saw him run a terrible race.
After that disappointment Ramaala sat down with his long-time adviser and confidant, Keith Sherman – former chairman of Wits University Athletics Club – and talked about where he wanted to go in the sport and what he must do to get there. Sherman told him that if he wanted to be a good marathon runner he should do the necessary groundwork as a track and cross country runner and then move up to the marathon when he approached the age of 30.
Ramaala has followed Sherman’s advice and has been South Africa’s most successful track and cross country athlete since 1995. He caught many by surprise, however, when he used his basic fitness from the track season to clean up on the road over the past two months. But this success has not diverted Ramaala from the less lucrative toil he knows he must persevere with if he is to reach his ultimate goal.
“These races in Europe have been good for me because now people know who I am and I’ve also earned some money which will allow me to focus on what I need to do without any worries. When I return home (he has two more races – in England on Saturday and Belgrade next Wednesday) I’ll take two weeks off to fix my body and eat well and then I’ll start preparing for the European cross country season.
“Next year my main goal is to get my times down on the track. I’m aiming for sub-13:10 (5 000m) and 7:40 (3 000m) and around 3:38/3:39 for 1 500m. For 10 000m I’d like to go under 27:15,” says Ramaala. The fact that all those times – with the exception of the 1 500m – are national records says something about his horizons
Ramaala will continue to race on the track if things go well and will only move up to the marathon after the Sydney Olympics when he will be 28. “If I can run fast times next year then 1999 will definitely be another track season and if I run well on the track in 1999 then automatically I will do track in Sydney.”
Next season it is his shorter distance times he really wants to improve rather than his specialist discipline over 10 000m where he already owns the South African record with his 27:36.30 effort in Holland in May.
Ramaala has had his fair share of ups and downs since coming to prominence but has managed to remain remarkably focused in a discipline where most of his contemporaries seem to be floundering despite possessing the required talent.
“It was Keith (Sherman) who really started my career. He loves the sport and he reads a lot. He has a lot of knowledge, plenty of ideas and his theory is very good. He’s very supportive and a very good motivator and he’s good at analysing problems when things go wrong and helping you correct them. I don’t need a coach. I just need an adviser. Keith is more like my mentor and most of the youngsters in Soweto want him to come back. They need him.”
Sherman is now working in America where he has been helping to develop a new accounting programme for an international firm but is currently back in the country until February. “I think my relationship with Hendrick was really a partnership between two friends who both loved athletics rather than an athlete/coach or athlete/manager relationship. I think the two-year age gap played a role but it was still unique in the sport,” says Sherman. “I think that an important consideration is that the athlete and coach should both feel as though they are equal in the partnership. It should never be a master/servant type relationship. I also believe that the most important thing is to create the right culture, structure and vision for the athlete.
“Anyone can write a training programme or stand on the side of the track with a stopwatch yelling splits. It doesn’t matter what you do on Monday or Tuesday but the ability to get the athlete to see the long- term vision is crucial. There have been no revolutionary changes in the fundamentals of distance running theory since Lydiard (the great New Zealander who coached Olympic champions Peter Snell and Murray Halberg) in the 1950s. So provided you follow what’s been written what can go wrong? The thing that made Lydiard, Bowerman and Cerrutty great was their personalities, their love of the sport, their ability to inspire and their vision of where an athlete could go.”
Sherman is a shy, retiring individual who prefers to remain in the background but he has an almost obsessive passion for the sport and is a great motivator who has a finely tuned mind that can think strategically and see the bigger picture. Although he won’t say so himself perhaps his biggest contribution to Ramaala’s success has been making him focus on the long-term using one or two key events each year as interim goals and emphasising the importance of him listening to his body and understanding what works for him.
Ramaala graduated with an LLB from Wits last year and 1997 is his first year as a full-time athlete. Personal sponsorships are hard to come by even if you are black, intelligent and articulate and have come from a poor rural background to earn yourself a law degree and run at the Olympics. Indeed when Ramaala approached a top company which does sponsor athletes, he was turned down by its representative – a high-ranking athletics administrator – because he couldn’t give the company value for money by racing every week.
When Ramaala went to Europe in December to race on the world cross challenge circuit he had no option but to earn money from the only avenue open to him – racing. When he returned home at the end of January he needed to rest but couldn’t because he had to run the South African cross country trials and then go straight on to intensive speed work on the track to try and get a world championship qualifying time in Port Elizabeth on Valentine’s Day – the only coastal opportunity available over 10 000m last season.
“Maybe I should have known it wasn’t going to happen but I tried. I only took three days to ease off before the race and although I was trying to push every lap I was tired and I was slowing down,” says Ramaala. He did all the work on his own that night despite promises of pacesetters and then had to watch as Meck Mothuli sprinted past him at the end after sitting on his shoulder for the whole race.
“After that race I still carried on doing speed sessions because I missed the qualifying time and I wanted to qualify in the 5 000m but three days before the race ASA cancelled it.” By then the damage was done though and he eventually bombed out at the world cross country championships as well. “When I tried to push it in training I’d come back with sore calves and physiotherapy and massage didn’t help. Later I discovered that my body was just tired and I’d lost weight so I was too light to run cross country.”
When he returned he took a rest and then went back to basic training using the tried and trusted formula which saw him do so well in 1995 – high mileage and cross country league races. That was what prepared him for his 10 000m record in Holland but in the world championships, although he qualified for the final, he blew when the Kenyans started surging midway through the race. “I need to improve my quality sessions and drop my times so that when they put in a 62 or 63 (seconds per lap) it won’t affect me. I must be able to run a 62 comfortably.”
Ironically all of Ramaala’s successes have come from doing basic distance work and he has yet to find the right formula for speed sessions which will help him run faster on the track and handle the surges of the top runners.
When Ramaala came home from Athens in August and won the South African half marathon title – only his second outing over the distance after a 65:57 for 49th at nationals in 1994 – he was told by ASA that he had to run the world championships seven weeks later. Reluctantly he decided to fill the time with some racing in Europe.
Ramaala of course went on to claim race after race and get the kind of coverage he has never had at home. By the time he returns next week he will have swelled his bank balance by more than R150 000 in appearance money and race winnings.
ASA can learn from Ramaala’s story in 1997 if they are remotely interested in seeing our elite middle distance runners reach their true potential. Never again must the athletes be expected to prepare for the cross country world championships and qualify for major championships on the track at the same time or compete in events they do not want to compete in.
“We have the talent in this country but I think distance runners are getting a raw deal. We need financial support and proper backing if we are going to take on the Kenyans and Ethiopians. I will only race the local track season if they put enough money into our meets and they organise the races properly. ASA said they will do those things but I think we must wait and see.”