New tool: Find Your Next Running Race in South Africa

Sport
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I have added another free tool to the site, a planner to help you choose your next running race in South Africa.

The problem it solves is that there are hundreds of races but very little honest guidance on which one is right for you. A plain calendar tells you the date and the distance, but not the things that actually trip up newer runners, whether you need a qualifier to enter, whether you need a running licence, and how tight the cut-off is.

So every race on the planner carries two things that most lists leave out. A “Before you enter” note that spells out any qualifier or licence you need, and a “Cut-off and effort” note that tells you honestly how hard the day is. You can filter by surface (road or trail), distance (from a 5km parkrun up to a 90km ultra), province and time of year, then set the furthest you have run comfortably and it flags each race as in reach, a stretch goal, or one to build up to.

A few things I tried to get right.

It is curated, not a giant catalogue, about 17 marquee recurring events that people actually search for, so it stays accurate and is easy to keep current.

It is anchored on the month each race usually runs in, not a hard date, so it does not go stale. The qualifying standards and cut-off times do change year to year though, so the tool tells you to confirm the current rules on the official site, and I will refresh those each January.

It stays in its lane next to the Comrades pace calculator. This tool answers which race should I enter, the calculator answers how fast and what medal, and the two link to each other.

Races covered include parkrun, the Cape Town Marathon, Two Oceans, Comrades, Soweto, Kaapsehoop, Knysna Forest, Om die Dam, Loskop, the Otter, Ultra-trail Cape Town, Ultra-trail Drakensberg, AfricanX, Mac Mac, SkyRun and the Washie 100 miler.

Try it here: Find Your Next Running Race in South Africa

If you race regularly I would love to know whether the level match and the cut-off notes feel right to you. And if I have missed a race you rate, tell me and I will look at adding it.

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Used age to slow down to a mere amble now. No more procrastination. Have to really get off that comfy couch.

By the way, I selected road, 5km, Gauteng and anytime but nothing came up. Surprised there was nothing but at least I can now rest easy for the year

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Ha, an amble still counts, and a 5km parkrun is the perfect way to get off that couch.

You also caught a real bug, so thank you. parkrun is the one event on the list that runs nationwide, every Saturday, so it should absolutely have shown up for road, 5km, Gauteng. The filter was treating “Nationwide” as if it were its own province and quietly dropping it whenever you picked a specific one. I have fixed that, so parkrun now appears under any province you choose. Try road, 5km, Gauteng again and it should be there waiting, with a Saturday start near you probably closer than you think.

So much for resting easy for the year, sorry about that.

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Does show something now! Damn!

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There is something quite humbling about a parkrun, the fast folks finish before you have even found your rhythm, but everyone cheers you in the same way. Glad the tool now does what it promises, because that Nationwide fix matters more than it sounds. So many of us only need that first easy win to believe we can keep going.

What I appreciate most is the honesty about qualifiers and cut-offs. A few of my colleagues signed up for a half last year without realising the time limits, and the disappointment nearly put them off running for good. A planner that flags those things up front would have saved them a lot of heartache, and probably kept them lacing up.

Joburg has some lovely Saturday morning routes too, so an amble is a perfectly respectable place to start. Slow and consistent beats one heroic run that wrecks your knees by Monday.

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Only thing is when I amble I sometimes wonder If I did a moderately paced walk it would be faster, especially uphill. So pretending to run but actually not even walking :grinning_face:

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Lovely to see the fix went in so fast, that is the sort of thing that keeps me coming back to this site. parkrun has honestly been a small lifesaver for our family on Saturday mornings. My two used to moan about it, but now they race me to the finish and we treat ourselves to something nice after, it gets everyone off the couch and out the house for free.

For anyone in our part of the world the North Beach and Bluff parkruns are gorgeous, you get the sea breeze and the kids love the promenade. Walking it counts too, so an amble is a perfectly respectable start. Maybe a little idea for the tool, a tick box to show which races are buggy friendly or family friendly would help us parents plan a morning out. Well done on building something this useful :slightly_smiling_face:

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This made my morning, Ayesha. Your two racing you to the finish and then a treat after is exactly the win the whole tool is chasing, that first easy Saturday that quietly turns into a habit. North Beach and the Bluff are both gems too, you cannot beat that sea breeze.

The family friendly tick box is a lovely idea, and an honest one, because a flat tar promenade is a world apart from a trail with a stile every kilometre. parkrun is buggy friendly almost by definition, so I can lean on that and flag the events where a pram and small legs genuinely work, rather than pretending they all do. Let me add it to the list. Thank you for the nudge, and enjoy Saturday.

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Nice catch on that one, classic filter logic trap. Treating “Nationwide” as just another province value is the kind of thing that slips past every time, because the data looks fine until someone picks a specific filter and the sentinel gets excluded by the same equality check. We hit something similar at work with a “remote” location tag that kept vanishing from city searches.

The clean fix is usually to handle those wildcard entries separately from the normal province match, something like:

  • if race.province is “Nationwide”, always include it
  • otherwise compare against the selected province
  • then apply the distance and surface filters on top

That way parkrun, and any future national series, never falls through.

Also a solid shout for parkrun as the couch starting point. Free, timed, every Saturday, and the 5km is honestly the most underrated entry into running in this country. Which Gauteng parkrun did the tool surface for you in the end?

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Exactly right, and that is precisely how the fix landed. The province check now short-circuits: if a race is tagged Nationwide it goes straight through regardless of what province you selected, and the distance and surface filters still do their job on top. Any future national events inherit that behaviour for free.

Nebula went quiet after “does show something now” so I am as curious as you are about which one came up. Nebula, which parkrun was it?