“Did you see my profile picture?” Dave Adams asks midway through our interview as we discuss his team’s scintillating showing at the 2022 Comrades Marathon.
I’d seen the picture all right. His athlete, winner Tete Dijana, had the same picture as his WhatsApp profile. It is a shot of Adams, Dijana, Edward Mothibi and Dan Moselakwe in a four-way embrace at the finish line inside the Moses Mabhida Stadium.
“That was a very emotional moment for me,” Adams says. “We have mutual respect as a team. We are a close-knit group and that moment at the finish line was so special.”
Before the four-way embrace, Adams had welcomed each of his team’s runners with a tight hug. “Tete came in and he ran straight into my arms. We hugged for a long time. He didn’t want to let go. The boy was very emotional. But I had to let him go because ‘Slender’ [Mothibi] was coming in and I had to congratulate him too.”
After the first two men’s runners came in, they were all pleasantly surprised to see Comrades debutant and Moselakwe coming in at third.
“We were expecting [Joseph] Manyedi to be third. But then Daniel comes in and we are all besides ourselves with excitement for him. He rushed to me and hugged me very tight. He was crying — tears of joy, of course. The boy nearly squeezed the life out of me,” Adams said, chuckling.
Such is the camaraderie of Adams’s six-member Nedbank Running Club team that dominated the down run of the 95th Comrades Marathon. Besides the trio who took all the podium places, two others finished in the gold medal top 10 positions. Manyedi came in at seventh, while Johannes Makgetla won the veteran category (40 to 49-year-olds) with his fifth-place finish. The rose among the thorns in the team, Galaletsang Mekgoe, finished fifth in her maiden Comrades.
But what is it that brought the group such amazing results? According to the athletes, Adams was the key to their success.
“Honestly, coach Dave is not just a coach to us. He is a mentor, friend and father,” 2019 winner Mothibi said, adding it is easy to give your all on the road for such a coach.
Dijana concurred. “Coach Dave is an amazing man. He treated us like his children and always went out of his way to make sure we were comfortable in the camp. He did not want any of us to have an excuse for not doing well at the race. I am celebrated as a Comrades champion today because of what coach Dave has done for me.”
Mekgoe was similarly full of praise for Adams, describing the Comrades green number holder (more than 10 races completed) as “a father”. “While he made sure I trained hard, coach Dave wrapped me in cotton wool at the camp. He did everything for me. He even woke up and made oats for me to have for breakfast.”
Adams giggles upon being told what his only female athlete had to say. “She’s too kind. But the reality is that having worked in the mines for years, I am used to waking up early and preparing my own food. So in the camps, I am always the first one to wake up and make oats, and I make for everybody.”
Coach Dave is an amazing man. He treated us like his children and always went out of his way to make sure we were comfortable in the camp. He did not want any of us to have an excuse for not doing well at the race.
— Tete Dijana, 2022 Comrades winner
Adams was delighted Mekgoe shone as bright as she did — her fifth-place finish in a time of 6:42:53 is the best time ever run by a black SA woman at Comrades since they were allowed to participate from 1975. “What she did has got me very excited. The girl is very committed, and I am inspired by her feat. She has a very bright future.”
Mothibi said Adams is a master planner who believes in teamwork. “What makes coach Dave special and able to achieve the results he has, is that whatever ideas or strategies he thinks of, he talks to us, the athletes, and allows us to share our input. He always explains what he thinks is right or wrong to do either in training or races.”
Planning, Adams says, is crucial. Having honed his coaching while working at the Rustenburg mines coaching the relay teams, he has learnt success does not come by chance.
“I believe in long-term planning. For this year’s Comrades we started training in December. We knew we had the race in Gqeberha [Nedbank Runified 50km] so we allowed them to do the SA Marathon Championships, which we built on for Comrades. We also went to Om Die Dam [50km in Hartbeespoort] for training, and I gave them a target of 3:30, which they did.”
Incredibly, winner Dijana only joined Adams’s team in June. Nedbank have various teams coached by other coaches. Adams was quick to credit fellow coaches Peter Gaobetwe and Shadrack Hoff for the work they did with Dijana to see him finish second behind world record-breaker Stephen Mokoka in the Nedbank Runified. “Peter and Shadrack developed Tete and I realised that he had potential when he joined us. I can’t take credit for what he achieved in Gqeberha because he was not with me then.”
Adams reveals that his team’s training was the kind that was always going to yield positive results. “We didn’t cut corners. We began by doing a lot of hill-work, and we were lucky to find permission to run on this private farm that has a tough hilly route for our Wednesday session. The route takes us up to a reservoir at the top of the Magaliesberg mountain. We started by doing a 20km run in April and built up from there until we were doing 50km in July.”
A two-week camp in high-altitude Dullstroom put the final touches on the year’s hard work, and Adams and his team returned from there in no doubt that they would shine at the KwaZulu-Natal ultra-marathon.
“I told the guys nobody was going to beat them. The plan was that they should start off cautiously until they got to Umlaas [the route’s highest point at about the 25km mark] where they should pick up the pace. I wanted them to get to the halfway mark [Drummond in 2:43:45] and they did that in just three seconds slower.”
What they did thereafter is now common knowledge, the team dominating the top 10 in a manner not achieved before in the about-90km race.
Adams, who groomed down-run record holder David Gatebe, and 2019 gold medallist Gordon Lesetedi, who finished 11th this year, are not those coaches who like the limelight, and they credit athletes for everything. He also acknowledges that their success would not have happened were it not for the great support they received from Nedbank Running Club manager Nick Bester, the 1991 Comrades champion.
“Nedbank are a really professional club who give their athletes great support. And this year Nick particularly put his eggs in one basket by trusting us. He had great confidence in the team and gave us everything we needed to execute our plan.”
Bester said the club had to go all out to back the team given the potential they saw. “I knew when I saw them at the training camps that they ran as a team and that they were going to do well. Coach Dave had a great training programme, but the guys also bought into it and put in the effort. There is magic in having a great training programme, and training at altitude in Dullstroom worked wonders.”
Bester said the achievement would not have materialised without the backing of others. “This success was the result of a lot of teamwork, not only from Nedbank but also our partners and sponsors such as Biogen, Bavaria and Thirsti. It was a great team effort because we also supported the athletes financially after they had to take months off work to train. Dave did everything for the runners — cooking, washing, seconding, driving.”
Then there’s Adams’s relationship with the athletes. “Two of them stay with me permanently in Rustenburg, and the others always come to my house over weekends for the long runs,” the coach explained. No wonder the emotional hug at the end of the race last Sunday.
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