Comrades Marathon training Archives

THE UP RUN

20 March 202420 March 2024
by Bruce Fordyce

With fewer than 100 sleeps to go until race day it is worth having a look at the challenge that faces runners on 9^th June this year.

Understandably many runners are reluctant to run the Comrades ‘up run’. It has a notorious reputation. The ‘up run’ is always the slower of the two races, and it boasts 5 arduous and infamous hills, culminating in the monster mountain, Polly Shortts. Runners must negotiate Polly Shortts after completing more than 80 kilometres, and this in full view of a prying television camera. Common sense and experience teach us that ascending is harder than descending. Running up hills is tough, running down them is so much more enjoyable, so the prospect of hours of climbing in an up Comrades can be daunting.

CLOSE THE CHAPTER NOT THE BOOK!

29 December 202329 December 2023
by Bruce Fordyce

My great friend Derick Marcisz never ceases to remind me that his lifetime marathon personal best (p.b.) is exactly one second faster than mine. In March 1983 I ran 2 hours 17 minutes and 18 seconds at the Buffs Marathon in East London. A few months earlier Derick recorded 2 hours 17 minutes and 17 seconds at the old Transvaal Marathon Championships. He has reminded me of that one second for over 40 years.

Comrades Marathon

THE SPRINGBOK ENIGMA

20 November 202321 November 2023
by Bruce Fordyce

Photo – planetrugby.com

Perhaps the most astonishing revelation of the glorious and superhuman Springbok rugby world cup triumph a couple of weeks ago was that they were able to win three massive, and exhausting games in a row. (Albeit each by one agonising point.)

Eben Etzebeth is purported to have said “Why win by two points or more? It will look like we tried too hard.”

Read more “THE SPRINGBOK ENIGMA” →

Comrades Marathon

CRAMPS-TRY RUNNING LIKE DAFFY DUCK

14 May 202321 November 2023
by Bruce Fordyce

Illustration by Daniel Yagman

“The reason you beat me in the ‘Comrades Marathon’, Bruce”, Hoseah Tjale once remarked, “Is that I start cramping with 10 kilometres to go in the race and you start cramping with 5 kilometres to go. While I’m fighting cramps in those critical few kilometres, you run away from me.”

Bruce Fordyce Comrades After Party

IF IT AIN’T BROKE DON’T FIX IT

22 April 202321 November 2023
by Bruce Fordyce

In 1972 a team of English runners from the famous athletics club, Tipton Harriers, in Staffordshire, arrived in Durban intent on sweeping all before them in that year’s Comrades marathon. They immediately caused a sensation when it was learnt that they were relying on a new revolutionary new carbohydrate loading regime called the Saltin diet to boost their chances, and that they had held striptease shows back at home to help raise funds for their trip. Back then in conservative “verkramp” South Africa this was scandalous behaviour.

Comrades Marathon

HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT!

15 April 202321 November 2023
by Bruce Fordyce

It’s such a pity that South Africa’s two premier ultramarathons are run just a few weeks apart. It’s like those poor people whose birthdays fall on Christmas day or New Year. It’s simply too much excitement in too short a time. Comrades Marathon runners are compelled to choose. One of the events must take precedence. If their goal is to run a successful Comrades they must make Two Oceans the supporting act for Comrades. Two Oceans ambitions must be cast aside, and the focus must be the Comrades marathon. For Two Oceans fans it means discarding the Comrades. It’s a little like choosing the Rolling Stones as the supporting act for The Beatles. Neither should be the supporting act for the other, It’s Interesting that many Cape based runners call closed season after they’ve earned their Two Oceans medals. For many of them the Comrades is a bridge too far.

Comrades Marathon 2023

FIND A COACH

12 February 202315 February 2023
by Bruce Fordyce

Casting my mind back over nearly half a century of running I realise that I have very few regrets, very few moments where I think “if only”

Yes “if only I had run a little faster and been a little bolder in the 1980 Comrades marathon, I might have won the race”

But Alan Robb deserved to win that year, and I was a very young runner, and was delighted with my second-place finish that morning. And, besides, a year later I won.

SHARPEN THAT RACE RESOLVE

15 August 202227 November 2022
by Bruce Fordyce

Through the bedlam and chaos, the screaming spectators, the over- enthusiastic pats on the back and the thick acrid braai smoke I could see the Caltex garage to my left, and ahead, not too far away, the summit of 45^th Cutting.

My legs were heavy wooden planks and it seemed sharp knives were stabbing at my quadriceps muscles, but I was running strongly and purposefully and nothing was going to force me stop.

Read more “SHARPEN THAT RACE RESOLVE” →

Comrades 2022 training

NIGGLES ARE VICIOUS ENEMIES

19 July 202227 November 2022
by Bruce Fordyce

Chondromalacia patella, Iliotibial- band friction syndrome, stress fracture, upper respiratory tract infection.

This horrendous list of chronic conditions sums up the traps and mine-fields that await runners as they train intensely through this critical phase of their Comrades Marathon preparation.

Comrades 2022 training

IN THE LONG RUN….

25 June 20222 July 2022
by Bruce Fordyce

Every weekend, while training for the Comrades marathon, the Comrades King, the late, great Wally Hayward, would leave his house in Germiston very early in the morning and run all the way to Pretoria’s Fountains Valley.

After what Wally described as “a refreshing dip and a wash in the fountains” He would run all the way back to his home in Germiston. The round trip was in excess of 100 kilometres. In Wally’s opinion this weekly long run was an essential part of his Comrades training programme.

“But I’m sure that nowadays you youngsters run much further than that on your long runs.” He enquired when we chatted about how training had evolved over the years. Read more “IN THE LONG RUN….” →

Category: <span>Comrades Marathon training</span>