Comrades- Recon

We arrived in Durban on Friday, dropped our bags at the hotel, and headed to the expo. There were lots of questions still unanswered. Can I wear my TNT hat? How is Amanda going to follow me on the course? Where is the start exactly? But probably the most crucial was: How do I run this race?

Specifically, I was asking,

1.       How should I pace myself?

2.       Should I expect to walk some?

3.       Other than hills, should I plan walk breaks?

4.       How many calories do I need?

5.       What fuel is available on the course?

Yup. Though I had started processing these questions weeks earlier, I was still without satisfactory answers and a race plan I believed in.

Shot of the Comrades Expo

Most of the pacing information I could find was about trail ultramarathons. The general answer would be to start off slow and then slow down. This wasn’t sufficient for me, especially with a time goal.

I picked TNT Coach Mike’s brain about this topic. All his 50-miler experience is in the trails and on those, you walk the hills that make you walk. The inclines are usually much more dramatic than road races, so this made sense.

Chatting with Coach Matt of Brooklyn Distance Running who has a couple 50+ milers under his belt, I told him that my 50K plus runs went well. He assured me I’d be fine, “If you've done 32.5 you're gonna be golden for the race. The mental part is more than the physical” We didn’t discuss pacing and walking though. His experience is mostly trail and I just didn’t ask.

I searched the posted articles and podcasts from Coach Perry, the official Comrades Coach, but didn’t find much about the actual race. Finally, on the Friday before the race, I had a bit of an answer. I picked up Runner’s World South Africa’s latest issue which had an article with Coach Perry giving 8.7 tips for running comrades. Tip number 7: Walk Early and Often gave me some guidance. 

Unless you're tageting a sub-7, you should be walking a minimum of one minute for every five to 10 kilometers.

Kinda vague, with a huge range, but it did answer question 2: resolved.

On Saturday, Amanda and I took a route tour that followed the race course almost exactly. Almost immediately the bus started climbing the 2,500ish feet of elevation to Pietermaritzburg. The course is known for having the “big five” hills. This is a hunting reference, classifying the five deadliest animals to kill. Safari enthusiasts still use the term, but rather than shooting these beautiful creatures with a gun, they shoot them with a camera. Personally, I think the big five is over-emphasized and it seems people make safari outings just a game of ticking sightings off a list. It takes away from a deeper experience one can have out in the bush. There are so many other animals and elements of nature to experience out there- so much more than just five.

Am I digressing? Not really, because just as there are so many more animals worth mentioning than five on a sarfari, there are a ton more hills on this course than the five named ones. In fact, Amanda and I discussed it and decided that there is exactly one metric shit-ton on hills on the Comrades course. The course literally runs through an area called The Valley of a Thousand Hills. There should be no problem aligning a walk break with climbing one of them. Question 3: resolved.

Some of the thousand hills behind us.

Hills aren’t the only thing we saw on this bus ride. Our first stop took us to the Comrades Wall of Fame, where for 200 Rand ($20) a Comrades finisher can purchase a brick and their bib number and be commemorated there at the half way point for life. The more interesting aspect of this stop was the Legend of Arthur Newton. Winner of the five of the first seven Comrades and avid ultrarunner, you could say he is a founding father. There is an indentation on the rock face along this part of the course, which can be taken as a seat, specifically, Arthur's Seat. Locals say his spirit still runs the hills in the area. Runners tip their cap to him as they run these roads and during Comrades, participants pick a flower along the course and drop it in his seat. Do so, and Arthur will bless the second half of your race.

Wall of Fame

Arthur's Chair

Our second stop took us to an emotional visit to the Ethembeni School. This visit made a huge impact. Meaning "place of hope" in Zulu, our tour guides describe this school as serving the disabled. Though we did see plenty of children with ailments, we also saw what appeared to be lots of healthy children as well. Amanda and I questioned this a bit. With a bit of internet searching, I found this site which gave some answers.

Unfortunately, in South Africa some still find anathema or shame in a disabled or albino child. Some of the Ethembeni’s students were abandoned at the hospital at birth and later placed in the care of Ethembeni. Others were found hidden in back rooms of their houses and left virtually unattended. Most were brought to the school by loving parents or caretakers incapable of providing the proper support for their children.

Some years back, a Texas couple asked to stop and donate clothes to the school during the course tour and the bus obliged. The students broke out in song in thanks for the donations. A hat was passed around and an additional 200 Rand was raised on the spot. It has thus become a tradition and the school has been unofficially adopted by the international runners doing Comrades. Running clubs all over the world do fundraisers for the children and bring the proceeds and even more clothes to them every year.  This year international runners raised over 350,000 Rand ($35,000).

Impressive mix of traditional and modern dance. And we were told two of these kids are blind.

Welcome USA. Thank you, Ethembeni School.

Somewhere along the ride I asked the tour guides, who have done about 30 runnings combined between the two of them,  what the earliest table was that had fuel, not just water or Energade (basically Gatorade with a bit of carbonation). They looked at me puzzled. You’d think this type of thing would be outlined by Comrades on its webpage or in this event guide of theirs, but I couldn’t find an answer. Salted potatoes would be offered on the course and that was thankfully clearly outlined in the guide, but I was interested in more. I had to figure out how much I would carry and how much I would rely on the tables.

Everyone I talked to and everything I read on the internet assured me that there was plenty of fuel offered at the tables- gels, cookies, fruit, potatoes, coke, and more. But no one could give me specifics. I posted a question to Coach Perry hoping he would cover the topic, but didn’t get a response. So I relied on what I knew from Ironman. For me, that’s 250ish calories per hour- 2,250 total if I pulled off a nine hour finish. To accompany this, I extrapolated the amount of water and electrolytes I thought I’d need for 9 hours. For sure I’d be carrying my trusty hand held bottle and since I took in about 3.5 bottles of water for a 3:30 marathon, 9 bottles of water and 27 salt tabs (3 per bottle) seemed right. Question 4: resolved.

Though I packed enough fuel to cover that and then some, I had no intention of carrying that much on me (23 Gus?) so I had to budget what I would bring. I have a great pair of race ready shorts that I’ve used for marathons since 2009. Later that night I loaded the pockets full of what I thought would be reasonable, put the shorts on, and ran in place to test their bounce. I did this a few times, shifting the fuel to different pockets, adding some, and leaving others out. In the end, I settled on 2 Gu Roctane in my water bottle pocket, 6 more in my shorts pockets, and two 160 calorie fuel bars- about half the calories I’d need.  I gave Amanda all the rest of my fuel, just in case I did get to see her on the course and was desperate for it. But the plan was to get the rest of my calories from the tables. Question 5: resolved.

Still on the route tour, we made a stop at the Comrades House in Pietermaritzburg, a small museum dedicated to the history of the race. Winners of the race each year were listed on a wall-sized plaque, for male and female categories each. News clippings and old photographs were displayed along the walls. A really cool model of the course took up half a room. The race was created by Vic Clapham to honor the lives lost and those who fought in World War I. 

Model of the course.

We had a particular aspect of history in mind, though, and I didn’t see it mentioned anywhere. Participants could only be white males. When did everyone else get to join in?

Amanda found a short blurb in the Comrades race magazine stating that blacks and women were allowed to run unofficially until finally in 1975, the 50th running of the footrace, when all people, regardless of race, gender, or age, were allowed to officially run. The article implied that the organizers were embarrassed they couldn't integrate sooner. But on a Post-Comrades Monday morning run in Durban, Amanda met a Comrades finisher doing his “recovery” run who claimed the reason blacks were allowed to run is because the organizers wanted a South African to win again. Being 55 years old, he was around during Apartheid, during the Comrades segregation, during the revolution, and now during these years of freedom. “I would have been arrested for this”, he said, referring to running with Amanda during the Apartheid era. 

The reality may have been a mix of these two perspectives. The Comrades website actually has some great info on its history, including the integration. It is interesting to note that during this period in the mid 70s, as apartheid laws grew harsher and the fight for freedom intensified, Comrades was able to integrate and be more inclusive without violence. Historically, it seems Comrades was a place to demonstrate political concerns. Though perhaps no longer.  From the general rules section: "Under no circumstances may a runner display a political slogan. (IAAF Rule 2(a))."

Our last stop on the tour took us to the finish, but I wasn’t much interested in seeing it- superstition, perhaps. It was a point to point race and I had not gotten there yet, I thought to myself. I felt uneasy and avoided viewing the finish line, hanging back with Amanda while the group went forward.

I napped on the hour drive back to Durban. It was valuable sleep, though I still had question number one to resolve. Or did I?

Coach Perry published pacing splits to guide runners going for specific times, including a sub nine hour for the Bill Rowen medal. Again, this was helpful, but it was pacing specifically for an 8:59:59 time. Also the splits were quite large, up to 15k long, and given the course terrain, I didn’t feel I could really apply it. Even mile splits were not possible and without experience on this course, I needed a mini pace plan to execute this pace plan. So I basically ignored it.

In the end, I did what had been on my mind since starting this training. I did what I knew and relied on my run/walk and pacing experience, research, and observation for the marathon distance and extrapolated. What has been successful for me is monitoring my effort level and pacing my heart rate. I would stay in an EZ range for as long as my endurance allowed. Any time that upper range was threatened, I would walk to bring my effort/heart rate down. And somewhere in the later part of the race, I’d just hang on. I’d hold the line, as my mantra states. Question 1: resolved.

Now all I had to do is go run this thing.

Runners added their fitness tips to this giant wall at the expo.