After re-reading "Run the Comrades" over the holidays, I realized I was way too ambitious in my plans for Comrades preparation. The initial idea for my training plan was to follow Bruce Fordyce's schedule for his build up to the 1986 Comrades Marathon. The 1986 race was run from Pietermaritzburg to Durban, a "down" run, as it will be this year. The race generally alternates direction each year, although this year will be the second "down" run in a row. This was done so that the race would end in Durban which is one of the host cities to the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament that begins shortly after the Comrades. Looking at Bruce's training program, I see why he says "A novice runner who hopes to run the Comrades for the first time would be foolish to copy my schedule."
Because South Africa is hosting the World Cup this year and it takes place so close to the Comrades race, the Comrades organizers limited the field to 20,000 runners, with only 5,000 spots available to first time runners like myself and running buddy Adrian (who I hope will contribute notes from his training in Hong Kong to this blog). Registration opened at 9am South African time on November 1st, the same day I planned to run the Hamilton Road2Hope Marathon as my qualifying race. Not wanting to run the marathon wondering how fast the registration was filling up, I woke up at 1:45am, registered Adrian and myself, and managed to catch a couple of hours more sleep before getting up to run the marathon. By the end of the day I had registered us for the Comrades, ran a personal best marathon in 2:48:33 and finished ninth overall. It was a long day but worth every waking minute.
Since the marathon I raced Ontario and National Masters cross country championships, in between recovery runs and have spent December building a base from which to launch my training program. Now January is here and I am continuing to increase mileage to develop the endurance and aerobic capacity that I will need later. In addition to regular runs, I run twice a week on hilly routes, one of which is Sunday's long run.
The first (partial) week went as follows:
Friday January 1st: 9am "Frosty Duck Run" with Longboat Roadrunners a 15k run over a course with a couple of significant hills. The pace was really easy.
Saturday January 2nd: Longboat club run 8km Fartlek at relatively easy pace with 4x 3 minute pickups.
Sunday January 3rd: Long run over hilly course. 25km at steady pace.
Bruce's advice for January: "Not too serious, just ticking over - no great distance work. Try not to think about Comrades. If the urge to race is irressistable, only short distances (8, 10, 15km)."
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