Beloved Long Runs: group long runs in KZN

What Beloved Long Runs is

Beloved Long Runs (BLR) is an informal long-run community, founded by Dean Wight and built with his wife Des. Dean led informal group runs for fifteen years before BLR became official in 2016. Runners from every club, and from well beyond KZN, have joined since; BLR's record is 1,000 runners on a single day.

BLR isn't a running club. It hosts long runs alongside KZN's local athletic clubs, from Amanzimtoti and the Bluff to Hillcrest, Pinetown, Westville and Pietermaritzburg, and will point you towards a club to join. Its house rule: no matter your club, age, size or pace, BLR is for you, and no one gets left behind.

How a Saturday works

1. Check the schedule. Each week's distance, meeting point and start time, usually an early morning start, is on the BLR website.
2. Pay for the water tables. A small contribution per run covers the tables on the route, by Zapper, cash on the morning or the BLRSHOP. Monthly subs work out cheaper.
3. Run your pace. Groups range from steady chatting pace to Comrades-qualifying tempo.
4. Coffee. Every run ends with coffee at the host club.

Registration is free. Registering gets you the weekly run details by email and lets BLR hold your emergency contact details. The water tables, stocked with water, Crème Soda, Coke, chips and sweets, are run by volunteers, so you never have to carry everything yourself.

The big runs before the 100th Comrades

For the 2027 Down Run these are as specific as training gets: you run the actual descents, on the actual roads, on tired legs. Comrades in 3 Days lands about eleven weeks before race day and the Route Tester five weeks out, right where a plan's longest runs belong. Bookings and prices are on the BLR site.

BLR and a training plan

BLR doesn't hand out training programmes; it gets you to the start line of the long run. In BLR's own words, "BLR gets you to the start line. SportMentor gets you ready for it." The two fit together naturally:

• Plan the week around Saturday. Tell your mentor you run with BLR on Saturdays and it builds the rest of the week around that long run: easy days, quality sessions and strength work, so you arrive on Saturday fresh enough to run it well.
• Build Comrades in 3 Days and the Route Tester in. Your plan can treat them as key sessions, with recovery afterwards, rather than surprises.
• Your BLR runs count. Whether they come from your Garmin, COROS, Polar, Suunto, Intervals.icu, Strava or Fitbit, or you log them yourself, the plan sees what you actually ran and adjusts.
• Fuel the long ones. Use the long runs to rehearse race-day fuelling. See the nutrition tracking guide.

Build my plan around BLR Saturdays →

SportMentor is built by Blue Sky Solutions, the team behind the BLR website. BLR run details, dates and prices are BLR's own; always check belovedlongruns.co.za for the latest.