Can I improve my Comrades Marathon seeding now?

Can I improve my Comrades Marathon seeding now?

This is Ask Coach Parry and today we have another Comrades Marathon related question from Sara Munnick. She says she wants to improve her seeding from H to G. Her times have been getting progressively better. She had a good Deloittes Marathon and didn't feel sore the next day.

She really wants to improve her seeding and wanted some advice on if attempting the Loskop 50km or the SlowMag 42km would be a better option. She has a goal of a sub 11hour Comrades Marathon finish this year and she is worried it may be tough to get a sub 11 from an H seeding batch.

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Brad Brown: This is Ask Coach Parry and today we have another Comrades Marathon related question from Sara Munnick. She says she wants to improve her seeding from H to G. Her times have been getting progressively better. She had a good Deloittes Marathon and didn't feel sore the next day.

She really wants to improve her seeding and wanted some advice on if attempting the Loskop 50km or the SlowMag 42km would be a better option. She has a goal of a sub 11hour Comrades Marathon finish this year and she is worried it may be tough to get a sub 11 from an H seeding batch.

Is there a better option?

Lindsey:   Brad always joke in the down run that H stands for Howick and I've started this year with the joke that H stands for Hawaii, but yes that is a long way back - I guess that is the point I'm trying to make.

Unfortunately, as we are getting into the final throws of preparing for the Comrades Marathon, neither SlowMag nor Loskop are ideal choices. They are very close to the Comrades Marathon.

If you are going to go and run them hard and get yourself a better seeding - you are going to mess up your taper leading into the Comrades Marathon and you are going to start with tired legs.

What I feel you are doing there is, nevermind compromising your sub 11 chances, I feel like you are compromising your chances of finishing the Comrades Marathon. My advice would be to go and raise R5000 and get into the CC batch if you want to gt out of H batch.

You really just want to focus on the training now. Also, while H is a long way back and you are going to lose time going over that start line - on the up run you don't lose nearly as much time as on the down run.

The down run you lose a hell of a lot of time because the roads are narrower in Pietermaritzburg, but Durban- you literally run out onto the highway so it does clear out quite quickly.

More important than the time you lose when you go over the line, is that for the up run because the road is then quite wide you tend to be able to run from the first kilometer.

You don't really have to be stopping and starting and running into the back of people the whole of the first kilometer. So my advice would be to resist the temptation, and just use those as training runs.

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