How support of disabled children made conquering Comrades a privilege
Wheelchair racer Claudia Burrough has completed marathons including London, Berlin and New York - but the Comrades ultra was her ultimate challenge
As Claudia Burrough raced towards the end of South Africa’s Comrades Marathon her overwhelming feeling was privilege.
Privilege and exhaustion.
Claudia had been struggling as she passed a special educational needs school, but was greeted by a group of children in wheelchairs far more basic even than her own every day chair.
One of the first people to self-push the exacting 89km (55 mile) Comrades race, taking place in 2022 between Pietermaritzburg and Durban (the ultra runs in the reverse order in consecutive years), Claudia put her own pain aside to concentrate on the children.
“Their chairs were far more basic than even my basic wheelchair,” she told Running Tales. “Wheelchairs that wouldn’t allow them to push around independently.
Claudia Burrough's incredible feat in pushing her way round the Comrades Marathon was only made possible by the determination of three athletes who paved the way for her.
In 2016, after months of deliberations with race officials, Chaeli Mycroft and Anita Engelbrecht became the first wheelchair athletes to complete the event.
The pair competed with running partners and both finished in under 11 hours.
A year later, Jean Marie Altomari became the first self-propelled wheelchair athlete to complete the course.
The trio all had to battle red tape to get to the start line and ultimately finish what is one of the world's most notoriously challenging races.
Their efforts made it possible for athletes like Claudia to also achieve their goals.
“At that point I was struggling, but I realised being able to do the race was a privilege. I was in a privileged position with the equipment I had, and from financially being able to take the cost of going to do it.
“After that I enjoyed it a bit more and realised how lucky I was.”
Finding parkrun
Rewind five years before that 2022 Comrades Marathon and Claudia’s life was very different.
A sporty university student who enjoyed playing hockey and ultimate frisbee, Claudia couldn’t have imagined she’d be competing in ultra marathons in Africa as a wheelchair athlete.
In fact, at that point she didn’t even like running.
“I would run what I thought was 5k and look at my app and I’d run half-a-kilometre.
“I thought I should do more just to keep fit to play team sports, but I wasn’t really interested in running at all.”
It was a chance visit to Bushy parkrun - prompted by a This Girl Can campaign - that led to Claudia finally embracing the sport.
Even then, she found that November 2017 event “baffling” and said it “felt like a half-marathon”.
That evening, Claudia received a phone call to say her mother, who had been diagnosed with cancer, was very ill. She sadly died the next day.
In the midst of what Claudia calls a really strange week - “I was still doing university and trying to get to terms with everything that was going on” - she was persuaded to give parkrun another try.
“I enjoyed it more the second time as I knew what was going to happen and where the finish was.
“I was faster as well - and after that I went every week for the next year.”
As well as improving her times, Claudia pursued goals such as earning a t-shirt for reaching 50 parkruns.
Soon she was running outside parkrun as well - and had her eye on taking part in the London Marathon, something she had always dreamt of despite her general dislike towards running.
In 2018, she signed-up for the marathon - and four weeks later started “having quite severe symptoms in my legs”.
Crutches - and competitiveness
The bio in Claudia’s Twitter account includes the words, “Motivated by being told I won’t be able to do something”.
It was a mantra that was clear from the start of her mobility issues.
The problems with her legs saw her forced to use crutches - but that didn’t stop her going to, and taking part in, Bushy parkrun.
Originally, she thought having to use them would be a temporary issue and she’d be back running in no time.
“I’d been having tests at the hospital for a few years beforehand, but I thought my legs were just ‘a bit bad at the moment and will get better’.
“I thought I’d be on crutches for a couple of weeks and then I’d be running again.
“I wasn’t worried, but then weeks and months passed and things didn’t improve and it started to get worse.
“I don’t actually know when I realised this was it. I was on crutches for about five months and life just carried on.
“I went to parkrun, and I only really appreciated the parkrun community spirit when I couldn’t run.
“It became less about the time and more just wanting to finish. I took my headphones out and started listening to people around me.
“I would talk to the tail walkers and to the volunteers, and that community aspect was huge.
“It was like when I started. I got my time down to sub-35 on crutches, and I was chuffed to bits with that.
“That competitiveness just carried on, but things did decline.”
Even now, at a stage where she can’t walk at all or stand up unaided, doctors have not come up with a final diagnosis of Claudia’s conditions.
She is impaired by stiff legs and has limited sensation in her legs and lower arms, while joint dislocations in her knees and shoulders are common.
Back in 2018, it took a while to understand she would not be returning to running.
One moment of realisation came when she was on a bus and fell over, something that was becoming more and more regular due to a lack of balance.
“I just slammed and hit the floor,” she said. “I was helped up by an elderly lady. As an early 20-something-year-old, that hit home how bad things were.
“An elderly lady was helping me up and giving up her seat so I could sit down.”
‘I couldn’t push - it was horrendous’
Despite her increasing problems with balance, things only changed when Claudia was told she couldn’t run the Royal Parks Half Marathon on crutches - but that she could use a wheelchair.
She purchased a second-hand chair to use purely for the event and the London Marathon, which she still intend to compete in.
“I got it, and I couldn’t push at all. It was horrendous,” she said.
“But once I started training for the Royal Parks, I got better and stronger. I realised being in a wheelchair wasn’t the end of the world, because I could now go out all day and do all the things I wanted to.
“Before I’d been limiting myself as I wasn’t able to stand up for long. My wheelchair actually gave me a huge sense of freedom.”
It was August 2018 when she got the chair, with the Royal Parks Half due to take place in October.
“My first aim was to do parkrun, so I went out and tried to do the Bushy parkrun course in my chair.
“I got half round round and had to stop, and went away thinking ‘this is never going to work’.”
Claudia didn’t just want to be able to go out and about in her wheelchair, she wanted to go as quickly as possible.
She bought a freewheel, a piece of equipment which clips to the front of chairs to make them more stable and manoeuvrable.
Using that, she managed to get round the whole course - although that first complete attempt still took her an hour.
Undaunted, she went to the actual parkrun event the following Saturday, finishing it in around 40 minutes - accompanied by a guide runner, poised to help her if anything went wrong.
Later, as she improved, the guide runner’s role changed so that they were running in front of her to clear a pathway as she passed other runners.
“When I go back to Bushy parkrun now, I see loads of people that were my guide runners at varying times.
“The guy who did my first couple, we were doing 45, 40 minutes. My fastest at Bushy was somewhere in the 20s - 21 minutes maybe (we looked it up - Claudia’s Bushy PB is 20:32) - so I had a different guide runner.
“I had a series of guide runners at different paces. They would say, ‘you’re too fast for me now, you’ll have to find someone else’.”
These days Claudia does a lot of parkrun tourism and she doesn’t use a guide runner.
“I got stronger,” she said. “My arms had originally been quite weak, but with extra training and by using the chair every day I built up strength.”
She finished Royal Parks, and set her sights on her next goal - The London Marathon.
Conquering the capital
Claudia had entered the London Marathon ballot every year since she was 18, but without success.
With the reality of her condition settling in, she didn’t want to waste any more time waiting so took up a charity place with Scope.
On race day, she started steadily, remembering advice from friends and family to “take it slowly, soak up the atmosphere, just enjoy it.
“And I must have been half a kilometre in when I thought, ‘I’ll only enjoy it if I’m really pushing myself’.
“And then I just shot off. It was probably the greatest day of my life. That sounds really over the top, but I felt a sense of freedom.
“I was pushing on closed streets in London, with no kerbs to navigate.
“People were cheering, shouting my name. The whole thing was incredible.”
Claudia finished the marathon in four hours and two seconds, and was greeted at the finish by a proud text message from her dad.
“I replied to him going, ‘mmm, yeah, but two seconds!’
“I loved it though, and just wanted to do it again.”
Claudia had already signed up for Brighton Marathon, and several more have followed since including London a further two times, Berlin and New York.
“When I first started using my chair, people around me really struggled to adjust,” she said.
“They didn’t know what to say. They were grieving what I’d lost in the same way I was.
“I didn’t know how to react to those people either, so I put on a brave front to show them I could do this and was going to show them what I could do.
“To start with, those running events were me saying, ‘yeah, I’m in a wheelchair but I can still do this’.
“But things like London were a real turning point. I realised this was me. You can accept that, I can accept that and we’ll just carry on.”
Joining the racing elite?
Incredibly, despite now having broken six ultra-marathon records - including being the 100 mile wheelchair world record holder - Claudia still competes in most of her races in a day chair.
Her personal best for the London Marathon is now two hours 53, even though she still takes part with the ‘masses’ rather than the elite wheelchair racers.
“I do have a racing chair, but I’ve not done a marathon in my racing chair,” she said.
“All the marathons I’ve done, and 90 per cent of the races I’ve done, have been in my day chair with the same set-up as when I first started.
“It depends on the marathon as to how they organise the wheelchairs. With New York, even if you were in a day wheelchair you are put with the racing elite.
“Berlin was the same, but with London you are in with the masses. It depends.”
During the pandemic lockdown, Claudia did a 5k in 18:51 in her day chair and thought that was probably as fast as it would ever allow her to go.
“That got the cogs whirring about competitive wheelchair racing,” she told Running Tales.
She started wheelchair racing “as you see it in the Paralympics” in May last year and now trains with David Weir’s academy.
But moving into elite wheelchair racing has been complicated.
“You have to be classified to go to the Paralympics to compete at the world marathon majors in a racing chair,” Claudia said.
“At the moment I don’t have a classification because I don’t have a finalised diagnosis.
“I can’t go to the Paralympics. I couldn’t do New York, London, Berlin, any of the world majors in my racing chair as I don’t have a classification.
“I’ve done a couple of half marathons, and won some prize money. I would love to progress in wheelchair racing, but to me the day chair stuff is still as important.
“Maybe if I got classified and there was a chance to progress in the sport, then my balance might shift slightly.
“Right now, I’ll go to track training twice a week and compete with all these other wheelchair users as part of David Weir’s Academy.
“They then go and train in their racing chairs on Saturday, and I still go to parkrun and get stuck in a muddy field - and I enjoy that just as much.
“That’s why parkrun is so important. I had to stop playing team sports but I could still go to parkrun.
“It is the only thing I have done as a runner, as an able-bodied person, all the way through to being a wheelchair user.”
Becoming a Comrade
Claudia stumbled upon the Comrades Marathon while listening to the Marathon Talk podcast.
Attracted by the idea of an ultra that was a road race, she discovered it was permitted to do it in a wheelchair and “entered on a whim on a dark, January night”.
She had originally hoped to participate in the 2020 race, but coronavirus put paid to that and the 2021 event went the same way.
An undeterred Claudia upped her training, completing the Comrades distance twice before finally arriving at the start line this year.
She found the actual race much harder than she expected, but was inspired by “a massive fear of failure, which drives me to finish anything”.
Claudia found the atmosphere at Comrades - bolstered by those SEND kids - rivalled London, still her favourite race.
“Spectators get there at 5am, set up their BBQs and are there for the whole day,” she said.
“And it is the whole route. There are very few parts of that route where there is nobody there.
“A lot of the spectators had never seen a wheelchair user push Comrades, or even taking place in a race before. The crowd were so loud, it was almost overwhelming.
“It was an unbelievable experience. I spent about 88k of it saying ‘I’m never doing this again. It’s been lovely, but I’m never doing this again’.
“And then I crossed the finish line, and got grabbed by the TV company and they interviewed me and were like, ‘so are you going to come back and do it again?’
“And I said, yeah, probably.
“I’ve booked for next year. I want the back to back, that’s the big thing.”
You suspect that will be a privilege for both race and racer.