Well done to everyone who ran Comrades! To all those that finished very well done and to those who might not have finished we'll see you at the next one. I enjoyed the day out and was chuffed with my result. I was hoping to, and had planned on running for a silver. Started out in A batch so crossed the line a matter of a few seconds. Very soon there were B, C, D batch runners flying past. I guess most of them faded into nothing further down the road? Stuck to my required pace nicely and felt comfortable and was slightly ahead through my first few splits. Went through half way spot on and carried on. It was from about 55-60ks that I started slowing and found I was battling to run the required pace per km to be in with a shot at that silver. For nutrition I had arranged for a few spots to collect Maurten drink mix and Maurten gels and a few rice cakes I had made (as used by cycling teams), so the nutrition worked out well. Only had water from tables and a few cokes at the last few tables. It was probably from 25ks out where a combination of my mind and body decided that silver wasn't likely. It then became a matter of soldiering on as best as possible and keep moving forward and hopefully get below 8hrs. The legs were very tired at this stage. Decided that I would do my utmost to run the entire Pollys which I did, although it was more of a shuffle and wasn't much faster than those walking Those last few Kms were seriously tough. When the silver gun went off I was just short of 3 kms from the finish. Running into finish area was special. Saw my folks at the start of the dirt road. Was caught on tv blowing a snot bomb and was on tv for the whole dirt stretch, through the tunnel and onto the finish straight. Running that uneven green mat was interesting and being on the finish straight with only a few runners around was lekker. At the end of the day I finished my third Comrades and did 7h44. It was a 44 minute improvement from last year and a big 2h54 improvement from my first up run where I was reduced to walking for the last 20 or so ks due to a sore groin. Really enjoyed actually running the finish this year With some work I think I can nail the silver so that'll be the goal for next year.
