Today we have a Comrades Marathon qualifying related question from one of our international runners. It is from Carl Ebhrul. He said “In the training for the Comrades Marathon, the qualifying races are scheduled in the year of Comrades. For me being in Germany, it might be better to qualify in Germany’s autumn.”

(We've written an EXTENSIVE post on qualifying for Comrades that includes qualifying times, races and paces. It also includes what I think is the best Comrades qualifying race for marginal Comrades qualifiers. You can read that post here)

He did this last year at Comrades and got a D seeding. He ran a 3.57. On Comrades race day, he paced for 11 hours but had serious cramps from 3. He ended up power walking to the finish and ended up bagging a Vic Clapham medal. He finished in 11.47. It was his first ultra marathon.

Do you think qualifying so late in the season, late in our year, would be a good decision? He relies on his long runs and started after he got the qualifying time, maybe the pacing got slower after that?

Brad Brown: Today we have a Comrades Marathon qualifier related question from one of our international runners. It is from Carl Ebhrul. He said “In the training for the Comrades Marathon, the qualifying races are scheduled in the year of Comrades. For me being in Germany, it might be better to qualify in Germany’s autumn.”

He did this last year for the 2014 Comrades Marathon and got a D seeding. He ran a 3.57. On Comrades race day, he paced for 11 hours but had serious cramps from 3. He ended up power walking to the finish and ended up bagging a Vic Clappen. He finished in 11.47. It was his first ultra marathon.

Do you think qualifying so late in the season , late in our year, would be a good decision? He relies on his long runs and started after he got the qualifying time, maybe the pacing got slower after that?

Lindsey Parry: I always think it is a good idea to get a qualifier now towards the end of the year, or you need to do it really early in the New Year. The reason for that is quite simple; it takes a lot out of you to run a really good marathon, which means you then need to recover.

When to run your Comrades Marathon qualifier

If you leave it late, into April for example, to qualify – what essentially happens is that you need to then recover from that. And you’re recovering in the time we really want to be training the hardest and doing the biggest mileage for comrades.

I would encourage you to try and qualify for the Comrades Marathon towards the end of this year, and then rather next year in April to be looking for an ultra marathon between 50 and 60km’s. Which you will run easy as a training run, but that will also help him to prepare himself better. Because doing 89km as your first – it’s quite a big jump from 42’2km to 89km.