Today’s question on the Ask Coach Parry Podcast relates to planning your Comrades Marathon itinerary as an international. It comes from Tom Ihlenfeldt, and he says he is coming to Botswana for a week at the end of May 2015 from the USA.

He wants to make the Comrades Marathon part of the trip and wants to know what will be best from an international runners perspective, how best to plan your Comrades Marathon Itinerary. Should you plan the holiday for the week before or the week after the race?

Would it be beneficial to spend some time here before the race to acclimatise or not?

Brad Brown: Today’s question on the Ask Coach Parry Podcast relates to planning your Comrades Marathon itinerary as an international. It comes from Tom Ihlenfeldt, and he says he is coming to Botswana for a week at the end of May 2015 from the USA.

He wants to make the Comrades Marathon part of the trip and wants to know what will be best from an international runners perspective, how best to plan your Comrades Marathon Itinerary. Should you plan the holiday for the week before or the week after the race?

Would it be beneficial to spend some time here before the race to acclimatise or not?

Planning your Comrades Marathon Itinerary

Lindsey Parry: I think when planning your Comrades Marathon Itinerary you need to decide how much the race is a part of the holiday or the holiday is a part of the race. If you are coming here to give the Comrades Marathon a serious go, you don’t really want to be spending a lot of time on your feet in the lead up to the race.

So if you come in early that sort of cuts out doing touristy things. But obviously, if you are travelling across time zones, the longer you come before the race – the better. If you want to combine the holiday and the race and you are not a really really serious runner then I would propose you arrive less than 4 days before Comrades Marathon race day, typically 4 days is about the worst time of your adaptation or acclimatisation period. Read More

When putting together your Comrades Marathon itinerary, I would come in as late as possible, maybe 48 – 72 hours before, and then do the race. Afterwards you will be a little bit sore, no doubt about that. It may also be a little restrictive on the amount of walking and things that you can do. But there are loads of things in South Africa that you can do for the first 3 days and see some beautiful places doing a lot of driving rather than walking. After that you can enjoy your holiday.

The other side of it of course, is it is very difficult to enjoy a holiday fully when you know you have a 90km foot race around the corner. So just from pure enjoyment, I would rather the run the Comrades Marathon and then have the holiday afterwards almost as a reward for the hard work that you’ve done.

That way there is no guilt or stress or worry about should I be eating this or drinking that or standing here or walking there. But at the end of the day I think it does depend a little bit on how serious an athlete you are when you decide to plan your Comrades Marathon Itinerary.