Welcome to this edition of Ask Coach Parry. Today’s question comes from Mogo Madnazeer, and I think it’s a great question. He said he is doing his first Comrades Marathon this year. He knows it’s an up-run. In 2014 he completed the Two Oceans Marathon in just under 6 hours.

He’s been training since September 2014, and has completed a couple of marathons this year already. Two of those marathons he’s done in 4:15. He’s also doing Two Oceans once again this year. In training he completes on average between 80-100km a week.

Firstly, do you think this will be enough training for the Comrades Marathon, and secondly, do you think aiming for a bronze medal is realistic? Thirdly, there’s a two month break between the Old Mutual Two Oceans and the Comrades Marathon, do you think this break is too long and should he be doing another 55km run closer to the Comrades Marathon, between Oceans and the big day?

Brad Brown: Welcome to this edition of Ask Coach Parry. Today’s question comes from Mogo Madnazeer, and I think it’s a great question. He said he is doing his first Comrades Marathon this year. He knows it’s an up-run. In 2014 he completed the Two Oceans Marathon in just under 6 hours.

He’s been training since September 2014, and has completed a couple of marathons this year already. Two of those marathons he’s done in 4:15. He’s also doing Two Oceans once again this year. In training he completes on average between 80-100km a week.

Firstly, do you think this will be enough training for the Comrades Marathon, and secondly, do you think aiming for a bronze medal is realistic? Thirdly, there’s a two month break between the Old Mutual Two Oceans and the Comrades Marathon, do you think this break is too long and should he be doing another 55km run closer to the Comrades Marathon, between Oceans and the big day?

Should I run another ultra?

Lindsey Parry : Not too difficult to answer this question. With a 4:15 marathon and with the amount of kilometres he’s doing, his only real danger of not getting a bronze is overdoing it and getting injured.

He just needs to be a little careful about how many marathons he’s still going to do, how close those marathons are to each other.

But certainly he’s going to have enough kilometres in his legs, easily, and he’s definitely got the marathon time to justify running a sub 11 Comrades Marathon.

Then it’s 7 weeks between Two Oceans and the Comrades Marathon, not 2 months. What I would look at doing is doing another, between 42 and 50, depending again, on how the legs are feeling, how the recovery is going and that I would look at doing at 4 weeks out. Because he’s done a couple of ultras and he’s done a few marathons, he may be okay doing a 50.

But he’s still a Comrades Marathon novice, and what I have been telling most people to do is to use the Two Oceans as their long run, even though 7 weeks is just a little longer than we’d like and then to pull in another marathon rather than another ultra, with 4 weeks left to go.