'The traditional A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H seedings no longer apply, but your marathon time will affect where you are grouped' - CMA explain new start

Following the backlash from legions of social runners about the new start procedure for the 2025 Down Run, organisers of the Comrades Marathon have spent the last few days engaging with members of the running community to clarify just what these changes mean. Last week Thursday (March 6) the Comrades Marathon Association (CMA) announced that the 49th Down Run will be divided into two starts - one group at 05H45 and a second group at 06H00. The furore that subsequently erupted as runners questioned what this means for cut-offs, medals and the finish in Durban led to a frantic few days culminating in a Q&A online session with scores of runners last night during which CMA Chairperson Mnqondisi Ngcobo explained some of the finer details.

"The thinking behind this change is to ensure the safety of our athletes and improve the runner experience," he told the United Athletes Forum. "You'll remember that in 2023 we had issues at the start in Pietermaritzburg that led to batch jumping, fence jumping and congestion at the infamous dog leg. This was with a smaller field of just over 15 000 starters. Because there are no street lights at all from the top of Polly Shortts it poses a safety risk to our runners hence the move to two starts and a later start. We will finish later but from around Berea to the finish at the Moses Mabhida People's Park the area is well-lit and we will also be deploying additional lighting."

Organisers of the Comrades Marathon say the new starting procedure has been introduced to ease congestion as they build towards the centenary in 2027 where the field of runners is expected to be even larger than the 23 000 entrants that have entered the 2025 race. Photo Credit: CMA Media.

Ngcobo along with his deputy chairperson Mark Leathers explained that they had consulted a number of experts on the implications of changing the traditional single start, one of whom is World Athletics Measurer Norrie Williamson. Having been tasked with navigating the more technical aspects of this change, Williamson spoke to issues around cut-offs, seedings, qualifying times, medals and the finish.

"Safety concerns mean that we have to get the flow rate or number of runners per minute at the top of Polly Shortts down from about 800 per minute to around 400 a minute. We considered a number of options including two separate starting points but eventually settled on this idea of a staggered start. The traditional A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H seedings no longer apply, but your marathon time will affect where you are grouped - in the first start or the second batch. At this stage it looks like all the sub 4 hour marathon athletes will start in batch 1, while the rest including charity runners and green numbers will start in the second batch. We are still finalising the 4:05 to 4:30 marathoners to see where they fall. This means that if you started in H seeding for example you would have taken 11 minutes to cross the start line in the past, but now an athlete qualifying with a similar marathon time will only take 5 minutes to cross the start."

With two starts, the traditional seedings no longer apply but runners will be allocated to the two start batches starting fifteen minutes apart according to their marathon qualifying time. Photo Credit: CMA Media.

Williamson's revelations mean that although the Comrades Marathon seeding will no longer apply in it's traditional sense, runners will still be required to submit a qualifying time on which they will be allocated to either the first start at 05H45 or the second start at 06H00. It also means that the intermediate cut-offs along the route will be applied generously such that there will only be one set of cut-off times regardless of one's starting batch. However because the race is a gun to mat event, it doesn’t mean that runners who start earlier will enjoy fifteen extra minutes to complete the race. There will be two finishing shutes for batch one and two, where each runner will receive a medal according to his official mat-time with protest booths available at the finish for runners to lodge immediate complaints if they feel that their finishing time is somehow incorrect. 

All of this innovation could lead to inevitable mistakes on race day. Yet the CMA are confident. Ngcobo revealed that they have embarked upon an extensive education drive to make sure that their staff are ready for 8 June. "We have started with a programme to train our volunteers and will be doing so throughout the next few months leading up to race day. Yes mistakes do sometimes happen and that is inevitable, but we are confident of a seamless race."