9 JUNE, 2019 | COMRADES MARATHON 2019

The Up Run

The Back To Back Attempt

Having successfully completed the Comrades Marathon - Down Run, last year in a time of 08:59:05, 2019 would be the year where I would have to run another good Comrades, thus getting my Back 2 Back medal on crossing the finishing line in Pietermaritzburg.

With my 2019 training program not having gone exactly as planned, it was always going to be tough feat. Initially everything started out brilliantly, and by the beginning of the last week of January I had already racked up 185km on my training program. This trend however would be short lived, as I was then hit with the flu, and in February I recorded a measly 107km of training. March, I was back, and was covering a good amount of mileage by the end of the first week, things were looking up again... needless to say, this was where it would all end. The following week, I was involved in quite a serious accident, when a truck had driven into the back of me at a traffic light. I would spend the next two weeks recovering from whiplash and concussion, and finishing March with only 121km under the belt. This did not bode well, as it meant that my first "Big Races" for the year, Old Mutual Two Oceans Long Trail and the Old Mutual Two Oceans Ultra would see me running off of a platform of just over 400km.

As the year progressed, it became evident that I would not reach my planned mileage for the year, and added to this I had not done any quality training sessions, everything had been about catching up on mileage. Trying to catch up on mileage rather than focusing on quality, would come back and haunt me.

With everything that had happened in the first part of the year, my Comrades 2019 goals quickly changed. It now became a thing of getting a good friend to the finish in her desired goal. Unlike me though, she had put in the hard miles. We were a party of 4 who flew down to Durban on Friday afternoon, Sarah, Louise, Dylan and I. Louise and Dylan would be our Comrades cheerleaders, although they forgot to pack the pom poms. When we arrived in Durban, it was a bout getting as many of the logistics out of the way as possible, so our first stop was the expo centre and then to our accomodation. We had booked a place not to far from both the Expo Centre and the start of the race, with this in mind, we decided to spend the rest of the afternoon just relaxing and then to head out for dinner later that evening. Saturday started of with a stop by the pharmacy as Sarah started getting sick, and we need ed to get advice on weather or not she should run on the day. With the all clear given and some medication prescribed to Sarah, we decided to get the "Comrades Jab" just for that little bit of extra reassurance, and then to close off the morning, we had to have a nice breakfast. The remainder of the day would be spent at the accomodation, just taking things easy and getting our morning race packs ready for an early start.

Sunday, 9 June 2019 - 03:00AM

The alarm clocks start going off in the house, and the time had arrived to get ready for the big day ahead.

With this common goal in mind, I have put together a pacing chart for this year's Up Run. Having never done the up ran I will not claim this to be the perfect chart, but I have compaired it to similar charts I've seen, and the results are pretty accurate. If you would like to download my pacing chart, please follow the link in the table below, and please leave your comments below both on what you think of the chart, and more importantly after Comrades, let me know how it worked for you.

Using The Pace Calculator...

All CELLS that need to be updated / filled in are highlighted in GREEN, with WHITE text. These are cells F20, J20 & E60.

CELL F20 is the amount of time you think it will take you to cross the start line once the gun goes off. This can be anything from a few seconds to as much as 20 minutes. Enter this value using the time format of hh:mm:ss e.g. 15 minutes = 00:15:00.

CELL J20 is your desired fatigue ratio through the duration of the race. Enter this as a percentage. e.g 10%. The fatigue ratio will be distributed to the calculations using the fomulas in the workbook.

Lastly, in CELL E60 enter your desired finish time. Remember to take into consideration the time you have allocated in CELL F20 Enter this value using the time format of hh:mm:ss e.g. 8hours 30minutes = 08:30:00. This will result in an 08:45:00 finish if you had 15 minutes entered in CELL F20.

Let the document calculate your splits.

If you are planning a race time of over 11:15:00, using the pace calculator will mean that the calculated pace will get you cut-off at both PINETOWN & DRUMMOND. To avoid this cut-off, first calculate your pace using a finish time of 11:15:00 in CELL E60.

Copy & Paste Values in the following CELL Ranges R22:V28 & R35:V40.

Follow steps 1 - 4 of the instrustions to re-calculate your segments.

If you like the pace chart, please donate to my chosen charity for Comrades, WILDLANDS by following the Donate link here, or at the bottom of the page.

Final Words...

The last thing for me to say, is never forget why you are doing this, but most importantly go and HAVE FUN!!!

The journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step.

― Tao Te Ching