Comrades - Safari

Today I saw a baby hippo playfully practice being macho in front of a couple hundred thirsty cape buffalo. We sat on the opposite side of the watering hole, snapping photos, watching the sunset, taking the scene in. How did I get here and what does this have to do with eating miles for breakfast? Yeah, let me explain...

Scene from today's safari drive

Somewhere between completing my second Ironman in July in Lake Placid and deferring the Mohawk Hudson River Marathon in October, Amanda and I began brainstorming a vacation idea- her dream vacation- an African Safari. She had been saving her Delta miles for years and inspired by friends Katja and David, we started asking the hows and wheres and how much questions. South Africa was to be our destination, sometime between May and October (their fall/winter) for best animal viewing. That’s when the light bulb went off over my head.

Comrades.

Some years prior, Mark and I were talking those talks we do when we dream up what may be our next adventure. This is how the Northville-Placid Trail 5 day hike came about. That was also how the first seed was planted in what would fruit into an Ironman for me. You could say the same thing of my first New York City Marathon. We had both read about this race, whether in a Runner’s World article or in Bart Yasso’s memoir, My Life on the Run, and we were both intrigued. At this point we had done a couple marathons and projected that at some point in the semi-distant future- say when we are about 41 years old- we’d think about making this happen.

Comrades.  They call it a marathon, but it is 54 to 56 miles long, depending on the year. They alternate direction each year and the course usually changes slightly as well. It is 54.5 miles this year, due to some construction in a town we are running through in the last 12 miles or so. And it’s also an “up year”, meaning it will begin at sea level in the city of Durban and climb to about 2,600 feet to the city of Pietermaritzburg, with a total elevation gain of about 7,000 feet. It’s the oldest ultra-marathon distance footrace in the world, and the largest. When I first learned about it, the field was about 16,000 runners deep. It is now 24,000.

Scene from Comrades

So as we were planning for Safari, I started investigating if and how I could get into this race. I assumed it would be a lottery for entry or a time qualifier would be necessary. Maybe the time of year wouldn’t line up with our travel plans. And who knows how long I'd need for training. Would I even have time? I actively mitigated my hopes as I reviewed this list of considerations. 

• The race takes place on May 31st this year, in the fall. It is also just a week after Memorial Day, which is great for our vacation day planning. So time of year fit- check!
• Registration was not lottery based; it was sign up first come-first serve and was opening in a month or so. So there was a chance. All I had to do was sign up online and pay. That was a surprise, but… check! 
• And the time qualifier… to get in, one needed to run a marathon in under 5 hours between August and early May. Huh. I had Mohawk Hudson planned and hoped to possibly do Brooklyn and something in the spring. And running one under 5 hours should not be an issue for me, so yeah… check!
• Finding a training plan wasn't so simple, as I'll explain later, but I found this Runner's World article claiming that I could pull off a 50 miler in 16 weeks(!) if I had a ready-for-marathon base already built up. At this point, I had 6 months and felt comfortable I could get to that point within the suggested time. Huh, how about that? Check!

This could really be real, for realz.

I called Mark up to share this news with him. Though our dreamed-up adventures haven’t always materialized, I wanted to lay this all out and see what the chances were that he’d join us.  I mean, this is Mark, who is known for such things. He is the master of spontaneity and surprise trips, of flexibility and craziness. It was a good chat and I got his blessing to go ahead with planning a 2015 running, even if he couldn't make it, but he would see how the next few months goes. I was happy and hopeful that there was a chance he’d come, with family in tow, as well.

Amanda and I spent a couple months planning out the details of our safari trip and what other aspects of Southern Africa we wanted to include. Victoria Falls was left out; a night in Johannesburg was added in. We made Cape Town a must and broke our safari days into two 3 night stays at two different parks. Smack dab in the middle was a stay in Durban, with a day trip- on foot, for me- to Pietermaritzburg. By early November, we finalized our itinerary, put a down payment on the trip, and I registered for Comrades.

But wait, how am I going to train for this, my first ultra marathon event, exactly? More to come...