Increasing mileage too quickly for Comrades Marathon training

Increasing mileage too quickly for Comrades Marathon training

Into the next edition of Ask Coach Parry. Today’s Comrades Marathon question comes from David Green.
He says he is a bit concerned that he is doing quite a bit more mileage than what we spoke about last week when we spoke about where you should be right now for a Vic Clapham, Bronze, Bill Rowan and Silver medals.

He is a first time Comrades Marathon runner, although he has run 30+ marathons. He has got four Two Oceans Marathon finishes as well. But those were all some years ago.

He is guessing that he will finish the Comrades Marathon somewhere between 10.30 hours and 12 hours. He is doing roughly 60km’s a week right now and wants to do the Two Oceans as a training run.

But he has to do a marathon before to qualify for the Comrades Marathon. Based on what he is doing for the long races in Cape Town he was thinking of the bay to bay 30km and Redhill 36km and so on.

After qualifying for the Comrades Marathon at the peninsula mid way through February he plans to up the km’s to 70km’s per week to prepare for the big months March and April. Is this too much?

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Brad Brown:

Into the next edition of Ask Coach Parry. Today’s Comrades Marathon question comes from David Green.
He says he is a bit concerned that he is doing quite a bit more mileage than what we spoke about last week when we spoke about where you should be right now for a Vic Clapham, Bronze, Bill Rowan and Silver medals.

He is a first time Comrades Marathon runner, although he has run 30+ marathons. He has got four Two Oceans Marathon finishes as well. But those were all some years ago.

He is guessing that he will finish the Comrades Marathon somewhere between 10.30 hours and 12 hours. He is doing roughly 60km’s a week right now and wants to do the Two Oceans as a training run.

But he has to do a marathon before to qualify for the Comrades Marathon. Based on what he is doing for the long races in Cape Town he was thinking of the bay to bay 30km and Redhill 36km and so on.

After qualifying for the Comrades Marathon at the peninsula mid way through February he plans to up the km’s to 70km’s per week to prepare for the big months March and April. Is this too much?

Lindsey Parry: No it is not. He has got a really good running history behind him. So he is not risking injury by doing that amount. What he just needs to guard against is jumping up too quickly.
I don’t think he is, he is running about 60km’s a week now and he is going to take it up to 70km’s a week now and he will be in a good space to train in March.

Good running background

Because of his running background and the fact that he has run over 40 marathons I am not concerned about him over doing it and getting injured.
At the same time, if he did a lot mor
e than what he is doing now, I would just get a little worried about him getting stale as he gets into April.

Over the years I have picked up with a lot of runners – especially those that do a lot of running in December and January – they almost ready to run the Comrades Marathon in April.

Maybe not mentally because they haven’t done the really long runs. From a physical point of view they start running pb’s etc and they are actually too fit at the beginning of April and they end up coming off the edge before they get to the Comrades Marathon.

That is why I prefer a gradual build up, but the way he is doing it is ok. Just don’t push too many km’s before March.

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