Thanks All and well done to all the finishers. You are a special kind of person to do this race. The Build Up I trained and ran with a mate since January, and we ran every step of the way together. It made a massive difference, I don't think either of us would have got the Silver otherwise. He took close to an hour of his PB, which is brilliant. I had only done the one Comrades back in 2010, so I didn't really know what to expect so when I decided to do this in back in October I did a lot of research into programs and strava stalked ppl that had run Silver in 2015 and looked at the training they had done. I had not run since finishing the race in 2010, I still have the shoes I ran in that day. So I had to be very careful about not getting injured. Training for the Race was broken into blocks and was quite specific about what training was done in those blocks. Put down a few markers (sub 90 min 21 etc) that needed to be achieved at certain points and then picked the races very carefully and what we wanted to achieve at them, which meant we did very few races in the build up. Also designed a mid week route that was 27km and had over 400m of climbing in it, we did this every week for 8 weeks until mid May. We called it the Anvil, for the Jozi ppl it included the climb past SABC in Auckland up to Brixton. The Race Had a really good day out on Sunday, only one really dark patch just about 3-4 km before Camperdown till that nasty bump out of Camperdown. I think I overheated and has over hydrated, managed to cool down and came right to the finish. Had a twinge of cramp in the right hammie at the bottom of Little Polly's which luckily didn't stay for long. Took it easy from the the top of Polly's to the finish. We started in A batch and just had a mass of people come past us in the first few km's, I looked up the road after 45th Cutting and all I could see was a couple thousand runners in front of me. I knew that only about 500 ppl would get silver, it gave me confidence we were doing the right thing. We started passing ppl walking already up Fields and up Inchanga we must have passed over 100 ppl walking. They just had poor race strategy. We just kept it steady all day and had our anticipated slow down towards the end. (I will point out, I think the split to Umlaas rd on the app is incorrect) We slowed down but not that much. The heat around Cato Ridge and Lion Park was crazy and it definitely made it a tough day for everybody. All the supporters and spectators on the route really do lift you, it is incredible to see how many people come out to watch. We had a race plan and were meticulous about sticking to it. You can compare the plan to the splits in the pikcha's, we were never more than a minute or two ahead of schedule. I think this was important to achieving any goal on the day, mentally more than anything else. It was physically as tough as I expected, what caught me out was the mental and emotional requirement to finish the race. It required a whole lot more of these than I ever expected. Some of my stats in the pikcha's. I spent 4h42 at threshold HR and only 21s in Anaerobic, the rest was Tempo. Post Race It is incredible how this race strips you bare. There is not a lot fun about running nearly 90km expect the last step over the line, but the high of finishing stays with you a long time. The way people react to you after the hear you ran Comrades is interesting, they are in awe that you ran that far, there is a level of respect. This is something about the Comrades that I don't think other events have. It makes the Comrades unique. Now to start plotting for next year.
