ON FORM XABA SUPERCHARGES TO YET ANOTHER 10KM VICTORY.

Glenrose smashes the Absa RUN YOUR CITY Joburg 10k course record. 

Glenrose Xaba supercharges to take another 10km win!. Photo By Tobias Ginsberg

It was a little hard to take Glenrose Xaba seriously when she described the race as ‘tough’. How tough could it really have been when she left her opposition in her wake to win the Absa RUN YOUR CTY Joburg 10K by a good two minutes while also obliterating the course record by almost the same time?

The Boxer Athletic Club starlet is enjoying an incredibly good run of form which saw her winning her seventh 10km race of the year at the Mary Fitzgerald Square in Newtown, Johannesburg in a very fast time of 31:55 ahead of Maxed Elite’s Blandiina Makatisi (34:03) and TUKS AC’s Karabo Mailula (34:14).

She was hardly breathless as she addressed the media afterwards even though she spoke highly of the course, conditions and the opposition: “The race is (was) so very difficult and the wind was very strong. I tried to maintain the pace and tried to drive when it comes to the hills and then when it was down I tried to relax and just move the legs so I can be faster. The route was very tough.”

A sea of red at the ABSA Joburg 10km. Photo by: Tobias Ginsberg

She also felt that her adversaries did not make it easy for her.

“The competition was very good because we had Makatisi who is an Olympian (she represented) Lesotho at the Paris 2024 Games, Karabo Mailula my training partner, the Phalula twins (Lebo and Lebogang), all those girls who are doing well. Competition was very great and I am appreciative.”

Xaba has been racing almost nonstop lately and just last weekend she won the Gqeberha leg of the Spar Grand Priz Serties to put herself in line to bring the title back home for the first time since 2018 when she reigned victorious. Since then it has been Namibia’s Helalia Johannes and Tadu Nare of Ethiopia who were champions of the women’s only 10km series. But now, Xaba is sure to be the winner with just one last race left and all she needs do is finish within the top five.

The national 10km champion and record holder, which she set in the Absa RUN YOUR CITY DURBAN 10K in JULY when she clocked 31:12, admitted that she was a little bit worried about whether she would feel the effects of the weekend’s efforts in the Windy City.

“In the morning my body was a little tired but I just managed to do very well, because I can’t cut my training I am going to a marathon,”  the athlete who is to make her debut in the standard 42.2km distance at the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon said.

Supercharger, who won last month’s Absa RUN YOUR CITY TSHWANE 10K in 31:51 which was the fastest time ever run by a South African woman at altitude, is sure not to be lacking in confidence for that step up to the longer distance - such has been the South African half marathon champion’s form this year.

In the men’s race, Kenya’s Gideon Kipngetich smashed the course record of with his 28:51 ahead of the Boxer duo of Chris Mhlanga (29:13) and Kabelo Mulaudzi (29:16).