My Forum

Hi All

I'm feeling a bit demotivated about my comrades training so I thought I'd come and read about what everyone else is doing. In the build up to my qualifying marathon last month I was doing loads of speed training, but I think that over the next 3 months, distance and hills are more important, with maybe the occational 5k or 10k race just to keep a little speed in the legs

I'm a brit but living in Cape Town for a year. There's a real comrades buz in the running community here, lots of people who have never even run a marathon before have their place in this years race.

I've heard that for a good comrades time you need to run 2000km between Jan 1st and the date of comrades. I'm a bit behind at the moment, but I've been tapering then recovering from my qualifying race last month.

I'm living in Cape Town, but if it's the same in Durban, minicab taxi's are fairly expensive here, but there's usually a backpackers style minibus that meats the main flights and will take you to your hostel/hotel. Probably worth booking in advance,but I just got it on arrival at the airport.

 South African airports aren't nearly as bad as places like Nairobi and Cairo for being ripped off, and although it's probably one of the most violent countries, they'll shoot you or beat you to a pulp withough asking questions, that normally happens only in the townships, so stick to the tourist areas and you'll be fine

Hello I thought I'd join this thread as The Comrades is my next big race. I just ran my qualifying marathon, so set to start building up the ultra miles.

I'm living in Cape Town this year, so have lots of experienced Comrades runners (and novices) to train with. But also more locals who think I'm totally mad even thinking of entering the race.

16 weeks to go!!

I've always run through any cold. I always feel fine. I even ran a 30mile trail ultra in PB time, finishing 4th lady then coughed the rest of the day, but was back training 2 days later as I'd expect.

Over Christmas I had laryngitis, so I couldn't talk. It was really frustrating, there was no point going to the big boxing day party I was invited to, as noone wanted my bugs and I couldn't talk to anyone anyway. Instead I did a really quality interval session - 10x1k. By the time my family got back from the party I was just about able to talk a little bit again.

 But I told someone that and they were horrified - apparently their mum exercised with a viral illness and developed a viral heart infection and died. I'm sure that it does happen but it must be very rare