It’s the time of year where runners from all corners of the earth get together for a grand athletics event in South Africa. That’s right folks, it’s the Comrades Marathon! We are really fortunate to have our beloved Creative Director and champion athlete Emma Carpenter participate in the nation’s most esteemed race.

For those of you still in the dark, the Comrades Marathon is world’s oldest and largest ultra marathon, covering a distance of 90km (89.28km to be exact) from Pietermaritzburg to Durban. This will be the 85th Marathon to take place and hosts over 20 000 runners.

Our Genius Software Engineers from the mountain-facing side of our office have developed a swanky application which tracks Emma’s movements during the course of the Marathon. Click here to check out our Quirk tracker. So how does it work? Well, for starters, your landing page will look something like the image below:

Map view of the Comrades Marathon

You will notice a miniature icon with Emma’s picture on it. This icon gives an indication of where her current co-orindates are, running speed and the direction she is travelling in. On the top right you will notice three viewing option - map (default), satellite and terrain.

Satellite view of Comrades Marathon

Other functions include centering the map on the runner and keeping the information about our runner’s progress…. running. There are also several tabbed options below the plotted course. These options firstly allow you to see the different profiles of the race such as Cowies hill and Polly Shortts.

One of the more useful functions is that the user gets an opportunity to see the entire path as well as the number of refreshment stands on route. By clicking on each profile you will be able to view significant information about it. To view this, all you have to do is click OFF on “Centre map on runner” as well as keep runner info open. Zoom out and you will see the entire Comrades Marathon path. Below is a screenshot of this feature:

The gentlemen responsible for this fantastic application are Jacques Oosthuizen, an esteemed developer and director at Conor Information Technologies, and Quirk’s very own golden-fingered genius, Louw Swart, who implemented the API supplied by Conor IT on the page at http://tracker.quirk.co.za. This should be an exciting race and we are more than certain that Quirk’s number one Athlete and only Comrade to date will do us proud!

* Unfortunately, a technical glitch on the race day is preventing the application from showing real-time position tracking. Emma's last known position will be updated manually as data becomes available via updates from Track Your Runner.

Some interesting facts about the Comrades provided by Quirk’s technical guru, Grant Wright:

900 000 - Water sachets will be consumed on a day where the temperature is tipped to peak at a mild 19 deg C in Maritzburg and 22 deg C in Durban.

11 026 - English-speakers. There will also be 6 918 Afrikaans-speakers, 2 195 Zulu-speakers and 494 Tswana-speakers.

10 800 - Kilograms of bananas.

9758 - Runners who will be wearing Asics shoes, the most popular in the race followed by Nike (4 447), Reebok (2 677) and New Balance (2 288).

3859 - Runners who listed “other” as their occupations (that’s a helluva lot of prostitutes, pimps and drug dealers, then?) More seriously, there will also be 2706 managers, 1145 accountants/auditors… oh, and 393 lawyers to boo and hiss at.

1300 - Tubes of Deep Heat.

359 - Unemployed entrants. (I suppose it’s something to do?)

151 - Naidoos in this year’s race – the most common one. There will also be 136 Bothas, 127 Govenders, 122 Van der Merwes and, inevitably, 119 Smiths.

79 - Oldest male runner, Martin Weidemann. The oldest female will be 70-year-old Kathleen Reid.

60 - Countries represented in the 2010 event, including 206 entrants from the UK, 171 from the US and 144 Australians.

44 - The number of Comrades races (including the looming one) by Dave Rogers of KwaZulu-Natal, the most for any entrant in 2010.

Also check out:

• Blogger Bake Off Breads