Comrades Marathon Blog

Yes yes, I know, it’s the 6th already. I’ve been waiting for the official Comrades site to update with the latest Don Oliver program. Don Oliver is one of the most respected Comrades coaches in the country, and his advice is definitely worth taking note of. Since I’m a numbers kind of guy, I really liked the table on the 2006 results. If you go and check the site, you’ll see the table. It’s obvious that your qualifying time gives you a good indication of what you should be capable of for the Comrades Marathon. To achieve a Bill Rowan medal, that is a time under 9 hours, you would stand a much greater chance of getting there, should you have a qualifying marathon time of under 3hours and 20min. Hmm.

Since I haven’t run a marathon yet… and I plan to run next year, it makes me wonder. I’ve decided that I’ll still follow the Bill Rowan training program, see what marathon times I achieve and go from there. I know I’m capable of a sub 9 hour time, but whether it will be in 2007 I’ll just have to wait and see.

So taking into consideration Don Oliver’s training program, and my planned races for the month, this will be my schedule for September:

That will make a total of 244km for September. All runs except the Sunday long runs are to be run at faster than 5min/km. It’s important to make the body comfortable at this speed. This weekend, I shall be running the Cape Town marathon 10km, instead of a long run. Perhaps I’m letting my ego get ahead of me, but I want to run a sub 40min 10km, and I think this might be my opportunity.