Mr Silly,
My general thoughts are that I'd rather
assume that the comrades winner doesn't
stop and walk - the alternative is that
he does, in which case his speed when
running is even more sickening!
Cheekee Monkee - I've done a couple "ultra" type events before;
the cross wales "walk" (48 miles) and Raid du Verdon (very hilly 115 km over 3 days - of which I only managed 2 due to a particularly gross incident involving toenails, blood, scalpels and french medics!), and I always walk parts. I think it's partly my approach - for marathons, half marathons etc, I've been working on improving my times (although this is only a recent thing). But, for these longer races, I always approach them with a view to the achievement being getting round. I think if you want a really good time, you probably need to keep going.
For comrades, I've yet to decide my goals - part of me would like to do sub 10 hours, but we shall see. I've looked at the L2B training session. The general sentiment seems to be to use a base marathon training, but increase the long run to get used to time on feet. This works well for me as I'm doing Paris, so I think that will be my general approach. I'm also looking forward to receiving the recommended Comrades training schedule from RW SA from Ratcatcher, which should be very interesting.
So, plan to date: follow (largely) the sub 3:30 for RW. Long run currently at 20 (c.f. 9 for schedule), will increase to 30 by end of Feb, 40 by end of March, then peak at 50 end of April - 6 weeks before the event. I've also scheduled in the following races:
Feb 2nd Watford half marathon
March 9th RW paced 20m
March 22nd Compton D'land challenge - 40m
April 6th - Paris Marathon
The above are to help me guage pace - I'm hoping that Paris well feel like a breeze after Compton! I may fit in a few additional half marathons during April/May.
Finally - Kevin - I haven't seen running trips advertised to Comrades, but I bet it's worth calling people like Running Tours etc. as advertised in RW. Altenatively, you can enter Comrades on-line, so why not make your own arrangements. You can fly in to Durban (via J'burt) and the local area has miles of sunny white beaches and the best scuba diving in SA.
No prizes for guessing what my schedule is going to be like in the 2 weeks before Comrades, which will be spent in SA!!
Apologies for the "war and peace" length email!
