26 APRIL, 1982 | LEON HENDRIK CLAASSEN

About Me ...

Who am I, and how did it all start ...

I am Leon Hendrik Claassen, and I was born in Johannesburg South Africa on 26 April 1982. I have been blessed to grow up in a loving family who have always supported me in what I do, and this certainly made things a lot easier for me as a child.

As youngster I always enjoyed more sport and involved in running at a young age, albeit very short distances. I remember my primary school days where we started off with the 60m races, and later in standard 2 I was running 100m and 1,200m. At my school, I was one of the top runners over these distances, but didn't really shine at the bigger school events.

It wasn't until the end of my High School career, that I actually really started reaping some of the rewards. That said, a lot of what I achieved then was with the support of a good coach at school. In high school, I put alot more focus on my 800m race, and am still proud of a personal best of 2:00min. The 1,500m event was never a favorite, and I never really excelled at this distance.

After school, I took a bit of a break from running. This wasn't a concious decision, but rather one that came out of deciding where one's working career would go, studies and all the other "unimportant" things that takes up one's time. Yes, I know it is important to have an education and a good career, but reality is if we get too caught up in this we forget who we are as people, and we become nothing more than robots going through the monotomy of our day-to-day lives.

I too fell into this trap of monotomy for a very long time, forgetting to do the things I love, and to spend time with the people who really fulfill one's life. It's sad how we learn to measure our wealth based on the amount of money we have, or the materialistic things we own, when in reality, our true wealth should be mesaured by the number of lives we touch, and people in our own lives who love us.

In the next section, I will take you through my running career over the last few years and how I got to where I am now. Hopefully, this section will show, that no matter where or when you start running, there is always an opporunity for you to strive towards and ultimately to reach those goals.

2010 / 2011

It would be until 2010 that I started discoverying this. I had gone through a stage in my life where all friends I knew had immagrated and my social life was so to speak non-existent. I had become a robot, going to work, doing my job, going home, playing computer games, and going to bed, only to repeat the same cycle the very next day. I made a new friend in the office, who encouraged me to join them for their new year's party at the end of 2010, and at first I was resistent about going, but in the end I'm glad I did. It got me to start re-evalutating my life, and in 2011 I accidentally sumbled on a website for and obstacle coarse race - Impi Challenge, sadly I had missed the year's race, but quickly penciled it in as something I would look to do the next time it was hosted. I then started browsing the internet for similar types of events and discovered the world of trail running, how on earth had I not heard of trail running?

If I recall correctly I think I entered one or two trail runs in 2011, but nothing over 10km. At this point in time I again, became addicated to being outdoors.

2012

Then 2012 came and I entered my very first Impi Challenge, the 12km event. I felt proud of myself taking on this challenge and wanted to go out there and just have fun. I remember waiting for the start, and the Impi Elites getting ready to set of for the gruelling 21km event, thinking to myself these guys are absolutly insane and that there was no way I would ever do that kind of distance. I would enter a number of trail races throuhgout 2012, ranging in distance, but never more than 14km. The thought of anything further made me cringe in fear.

2013

Then came 2013, and I decided to challenge myself a bit. I entered the Trail Series, and also my longest trail run to date, a 21km. I also signed up for the Impi Elite, a race I thought I would never do. This was followed with a number of other trail races rangeing between 8km - 17km as well as a number of Warrior races. My passion for running, just grew and grew with each and every event I did, improving a little bit more at each one.

2014

2014 wasn't a year filled with achievements as such, but it was the start of me really taking up the challenge. I made a subconcious excuse of saying that driving 30km for a 5km race was a waste of petrol and so forced myself into entering the elite races on both the Impi and Warrior race calendars. I again entered the trail series events, registering or all the long distances.

By now I had become a lot more confident in my running abilities, and I started looking for more and more challenges. Events that would not only take me to new and amazing places, but that would also challenge my physically. Constantly browsing the internet for new events, and then there it was in front of me The Old Mutual Two Oceans Long Trail. A 24km trail race over table mountain, this not only sounded duanting, but amazing at the same time. Anxiously I entered not only the Long Trail, but also the Half Marathon for 2015.

2015

I think this is when the bug really took a hold of me. I had two very big races on my race calendar, or at least in my eyes they were really races. I did not know how to prepare or where to start preparing, and found myself just trying to run as many kilometers as possible. I have to admit, that looking back on 2015, I think I was actually still pretty lazy when it came to training, making various excuses to myself why I did not feel like /training or running.

The Two Oceans Trail Run came, and very quickly I was given a reality check. This race for me is still one of the toughest "shorter" trails out there, climbing close to 1,800m over the 24km route. I remember coming through the very last check point, just shy of 4hours, hearing the marshals saying "That's the last of the runners", I think they were possibly refering to runners who were still at the top of the mountain, but this was just too close for comfort ... shocked and relieved at the same time, I made my way to the finish, finishing my first Two Oceans trail in 4:05:26. Who would of thought, that 24km could be this tough. It would not there however, as the very next morning I had to get up and do it all again, this time round though it was the Two Oceans Half Marathon, and yet again, I would learn how tough running can really be if you are not prepared. I remember struggling up Sothern Cross, I even think I walked at least 70% of this last section of the race. But in the end, I was proud to have finished my very first Half Marathon on the road, in what I though was a really good time of 2:07:38.

I learnt a lot during these two events and although they were not the biggest events according to some people's standards, these were amazing acheivements for me, and when ever I think about where and how my trail running started, I almost always think of this day.

2016 - 2017

The next two years of running, I would slowly start becoming more nd more dedicated to my running, working just that little bit harder, and at the end of 2016, I decided to take on the biggest challenge I was yet to face. I would enter my very first Ultra Trail, and what better place to start than The Mont-Aux-Sources Challenge? A very demanding 50km lolipop race, taking you from roughly 800m above sea level to around 3,100m in just the first 25km.

If you want to run, run a mile. If you want to experience a different life, run a marathon.

― Emil Zatopek