Cyclists with a "Running" Problem

[Hacc]

Could not agree more Andrew. I am also setting a time goal for next year. This year was nerve wrecking for me.

 

So what will you do differently next year?

 

I will for one try and improve my starting group. I felt frustrated from the start and I couldn't get a good rhythm.

Practice and practice your eating plan... Do not, I repeat do not try anything new on the day.

 

Have a plan A and plan B for your pace. Have a clear strategy for the climbs.

 

I am sure I can ramble on for a couple of pages.

 

(and that is how you end up entering another Comrades ????)

 

 

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

[Hacc]

Congratulations Edgar on your Silver!!!! That is bloody brilliant! ???? I have real respect for everyone that can run the up run under 9 hours.

 

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

[Stretch]

Andrew.. All I can tell you is that I ran through halfway about 5 minutes too fast and that translated in about 10 minutes slower on the back 9. I think I was a little ambitious with my 830 goal.. But I gave it a full go! During the flats I thought I had lost my br so was glad to get it. I still managed to improve my position after every split.

 

Point 2. Avoid buses.. run the way you trained. Buses run differently to how you run and mess up your strategy. Retrospectively I shouldn't have joined a bus... And the bus is the reason I went through halfway too fast... I'm glad I took the decision to leave it when I did..I noted one women who was still in the 830 bus at Cato electrical ended up rolling in at 10:30... That's a 2.5 hour positive split!

[eddy]

 

Must admit my memory failed me a little bit too... crikey that was hard, certainly harder than I even remembered, and my memories of my last up in 2013 were pretty brutal to say the least.

 

 

All I remember is thar Camper wasn't down, the Harrisons weren't flat and Polly's was farkin long.....

[SwissVan]

Is it only me, or do you guys/girls also think the finish venue was crap. There was no directions on how to get in or get out, and Parking was a disaster.

 

Yeah even watching on TV it was pooh

Horse track just does not have the same appearance or atmosphere as Kingsmead

 

BTW did u see the first lady finish (on a TV replay i mean  )

I bet she also thinks it was a *** finish

 

There was a bridge over the course near the finish line where the guy was handing out the mayors message and roses to the top runners...there are also timing mats under this bridge. Well she thought this was the finish (admittedly on TV it also looked like a finish line) so she stops and starts wondering around looking a bit lost... until one of the men comes running past her...then it dawned on her...and she sped off again over taking the guy who came past her...

[SwissVan]

Hi guys and girls,

 

I'm Eren. Having been following this awesome thread for a few months already.

 

Congrats to all the comrades finishers and some that didn't, who could like me, have been following this thread but have not responded. My bad for not posting sooner

 

Initially stumbled across this post, when trying to select a good watch for comrades that would last 12 hrs with gps on. Eventually made a choice on Garmin FR 935, but sadly not available in SA yet. I had to do comrades using my Applewatch stop watch. Was tough not having access to the metrics I'm used to in training.

 

I finished in 11:46 yesterday for my first comrades yesterday. Started training on the final day of comrades registration and put in around 800km on the legs since then.

 

I don't think I would have done this had I not found this thread. I read every single post, some more than once.

 

This got me through yesterday's suicide mission.

 

Thanks again....and sorry for being one of those covert readers

 

Eren

 

 

Welcome, great post  WELL DONE and great post

Edited June 6, 2017 by SwissVan

[Lexx]

Well Done Edgar. Awesome time. Im pretty happy with my BR. After a Hiatus of 10 years from Comrades I thought I would just do it in over 9 hours, felt good after halfway,but wheels came off from 73km. Jeez I struggled alot,legs felt like jelly. Never liked the Up Run and now I know why lol.

Came back home yesterday and as soon as I got out of my car, I started feeling sick and shivering my ass off. I think I caught a bad cold. I am not to worried. Pumped myself full of drugs and busy catching up on all my series on Kodi.

[Andrew Steer]

Andrew.. All I can tell you is that I ran through halfway about 5 minutes too fast and that translated in about 10 minutes slower on the back 9. I think I was a little ambitious with my 830 goal.. But I gave it a full go! During the flats I thought I had lost my br so was glad to get it. I still managed to improve my position after every split.

 

Point 2. Avoid buses.. run the way you trained. Buses run differently to how you run and mess up your strategy. Retrospectively I shouldn't have joined a bus... And the bus is the reason I went through halfway too fast... I'm glad I took the decision to leave it when I did..I noted one women who was still in the 830 bus at Cato electrical ended up rolling in at 10:30... That's a 2.5 hour positive split!

 

Pacing for Comrades is pretty much everything... It was nice this year not having any times to chase because pushing it definitely adds in an extra element. I paced myself perfectly if I look at my positioning in the field, I moved up from start to finish, every single split. But I didn't have to push myself, I stayed in my comfort zone most of the way and got to the finish pretty unscathed. Don't get me wrong, it still hurts, and I should probably have gone under 11 at least, but I got out of the day what I wanted.

 

Next year will definitely be something different... how far up the ladder I want to look will depend a lot on how my speed work goes and how fast I find I can actually go. I'm 99% certain I will never be Silver medal level, those guys are something else, but BR has to be a goal at some stage, but maybe for next year a Bronze, hopefully a comfy one, will be more than sufficient.

 

Another journey begins I guess, the search for a bit of speed

 

 

[Andrew Steer]

On the finish venue... it was a serious ball ache to get around there. There must be a better way to utilize the layout. I mean our club tents where a good km from the finish, we couldn't see any runners come in, the layout was super confusing and it was an absolute mess getting out.

 

On the water points, running out of water is a cardinal sin... I almost think they are trying too hard and in that greatly increasing the logistics - we don't need 4 flavours of energy drink, we don't need 4 flavours of cool drink. Sure mix it up a little every now and then, but keep the bulk the basics - water, coke and energy drink. It's what we race on all year round. The food also seemed to start a little later than I recall, only at about 35km's odd and I was feeling hungry despite a big brekkie. I'll definitely take a bar along to the start next time. A Gu on a scavenged Marie Biscuit for a first meal is not helluva appetising 

 

The salty potatoes, bananas and oranges all over the last half though are pure gold. And not to mention the angels at the physio stops... I can only guess how much Arnica got dispensed on the day.

[b-rad]

Andrew.. All I can tell you is that I ran through halfway about 5 minutes too fast and that translated in about 10 minutes slower on the back 9. I think I was a little ambitious with my 830 goal.. But I gave it a full go! During the flats I thought I had lost my br so was glad to get it. I still managed to improve my position after every split.

Point 2. Avoid buses.. run the way you trained. Buses run differently to how you run and mess up your strategy. Retrospectively I shouldn't have joined a bus... And the bus is the reason I went through halfway too fast... I'm glad I took the decision to leave it when I did..I noted one women who was still in the 830 bus at Cato electrical ended up rolling in at 10:30... That's a 2.5 hour positive split!

Congrats on the BR!

I was running with someone from the start till about 47kms where I struggled with running from there on due to my groin issues, who ended up running almost identical splits for his BR. We crossed halfway in about 4h29 so great pacing by him!!

What we did notice was how fast the first sub 9hr bus (almost certain it was the sub 9 bus) seemed to be running?? They stormed up Cowies and were motoring through the early parts of Pinetown where we moved to the side so they could get past us. At the time I was concerned many of the "passengers" were not aware of how quickly they were going.

 

Talking of positive splits I thought mine was impressive at 1h40 : ) ...I really wanted to run but couldn't

[Stretch]

 

 

On the water points, running out of water is a cardinal sin... 

when i heard they ran out of water..i felt really guilty that i was taking 4 sachets at each table 

but......thats what people need in the heat of the day...1 for the head, 1 for the core, 1 for the face and to drink...and one for between the tables

[Hacc]

when i heard they ran out of water..i felt really guilty that i was taking 4 sachets at each table

but......thats what people need in the heat of the day...1 for the head, 1 for the core, 1 for the face and to drink...and one for between the tables

They should go on 4 sachets per runner in the second half of the race. Lots of people were vomiting because they had no water and were drinking the terrible energade.

Another problem was not enough hands at the water points. Runners had to serve themselves.

 

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

[Edgar]

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. 

 

[ScottCM]

That is insane Edgar, huge respect bud.

[EmJayZA]

Wow. Congrats Edgar! 

[Lexx]

Incredibl Stu. Well Done.