How to turn a good Comrades Up time into a Down Comrades Silver!

How to turn a good Comrades Up time into a Down Comrades Silver!

Targeting a Comrades Marathon in Down run Silver? Age is not on your side, but you had a good Up attempt and think you can come close to getting that sub 7:30. Peter asks Lindsey Parry just how to get it done, on this episode of the Ask Coach Parry podcast.

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Transcript

You’re listening to the Ask Coach Parry podcast, I’m Brad Brown and I’ve got Lindsey Parry with me once again. A question in from Peter, Lindsey. Peter says: Hi coach, here’s my question, having run an 8:05 Up in 2015, I’m now looking at ways to improve over the next couple of months to see if I can get a 7:29:58 in the 2016 Down. Peter, you don’t want to cut it that fine mate!

He says he’s committed himself to your silver programme for 2016, but he’s also been listening to a previous podcast on our 50+ runners, he’ll be 52 at the next Comrades Marathon. Is there an easier way to combine less running and more recovery for 50+ runners for your silver programme 2016? Lindsey, first, obviously when you get older, it does get tougher, but what advice could you give Peter?

Lindsey Parry: Well, I’m going to first start off by giving him some good news and that’s that all things being equal and having a very similar race to what he had in last year’s Up run. That he will, in all likelihood, be between 10 and possibly 15 minutes quicker on the Down run anyway.

20 minutes – how to take it off your time

That helps because it means that he’s, in reality, looking for real time improvement in the region of 20 minutes. On race day itself, part of his success is really going to boil down to running the perfect race. So he’s definitely going to have to pop into either one of the, if he’s in South Africa, to pop into one of our road shows or novice seminars.

Actually come and have a chat to me or at Two Oceans at the Expo, but we really do need to chat about that race plan and make sure that he executes that to perfection. I think in terms of what he needs to do, we’ve had a couple of questions about recovery on the last week or so in the podcasts and that’s really the key here for him.

Is recovery the key to reaching your Comrades goal?

He needs to listen to his body, so yes, there’s a silver medal programme on the website and he needs to get through the bulk of that. The reality is, if he can’t do most of those sessions there, then he’s going to struggle a bit. But he mustn’t be shy to bleed a run here and there.

If it’s every week or preferably every second week or so, but every week or two weeks. If he needs to bleed, particularly one of the easier, shorter runs, or if he gets to one of the days where I’ve scheduled high intensity training, but he’s not quite feeling up to it; he shouldn’t be scared to rather move that 24 hours later and to replace it with a very easy run.

I guess what I’m saying is he needs to really keep on his toes about how well am I recovering, how am I handling and he needs to adjust the programme accordingly so that he never gets completely wiped out. Part of that process, again, as you go back and listen over the last couple of days you’ll find there are two or three podcasts where I stressed the importance of eating well.

Don’t miss your long, and fast training runs

I stressed the importance of sleeping well and he really just needs to focus hard on recovery. He needs to get his one, in all the weeks there’s one particular run that you can see is the long run. There’s one run which is the faster run.

He needs the faster run because he needs to get a little bit quicker, but he definitely needs that long run. Those are the two runs that I’d aim to get in every week. All the other runs that move around it, I wouldn’t be too scared to either drop the mileage a little bit or skip one of them occasionally. But everything to make sure that he really does get those long runs in, and the fast runs in.

BB: Awesome Lindsey. I was just having a look at the message from Peter and I’m guessing by the dialling code of his telephone number that he’s actually in Belgium, so he’s not going to be able to make it out to the road shows. I’m not sure if he is coming to Oceans, but Peter, what I would suggest you do is definitely check out the Coach Parry online community, coachparry.com/join and get onto the forum there. Get chatting to Lindsey and get your race plan sorted out for 2016.

LP: If I can jump in there, I think that would be really good for Peter if he does get onto that community and twice a month we have one hour open chats where people can come on and ask whatever questions they want to and that would be a really good place for us to discuss his training on a semi ongoing basis.

BB: Brilliant, there you go Peter, coachparry.com/join, that’s where you want to go check it out. Anyone else, you’re more than welcome to go and join that as well. Until next time, from the two of us, it’s cheers.

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