Today’s question was submitted by from Gregg Dardagan. It is quite a complicated one and reads as follows:

In all of Lindsey’s Comrades Marathon training programmes he has assumed dates for marathons. I know that he always says that the Comrades programme is interchangeable, so we should just change the times around of long runs or races if needed.

But after the marathons he has scheduled a weeks’ rest. I want to ask what we should do if we are running a qualifier at a different time?

Greg lives in KZN and will be doing the last Comrades Marathon qualifier in 2014, in 5 weeks’ time.

He is following your Bill Rowan Comrades Marathon training programme and wants to know if the marathon is at the end of November and then the rest is for 2 weeks and then minimal mileage for the rest of December before building up in January.

If he needs to run his marathon at the end of October and then rest for 2 weeks, what should he do for the rest of the year?

He doesn’t want to spend 6 weeks with minimal mileage. But he also doesn’t want to ramp up for the last 2 weeks of November and first 2 weeks of December and then drop off again for the last 2 weeks of December.

It is quite a complicated question, but I hope you can get what he is saying.

Brad Brown: Today’s question was submitted by from Gregg Dardagan. It is quite a complicated one and reads as follows:

In all of Lindsey’s Comrades Marathon training programmes he has assumed dates for marathons. I know that he always says that the Comrades programme is interchangeable, so we should just change the times around of long runs or races if needed.

But after the marathons he has scheduled a weeks’ rest. I want to ask what we should do if we are running a qualifier at a different time?

Greg lives in KZN and will be doing the last Comrades Marathon qualifier in 2014, in 5 weeks’ time.

He is following your Bill Rowan Comrades Marathon training programme and wants to know if the marathon is at the end of November and then the rest is for 2 weeks and then minimal mileage for the rest of December before building up in January.

If he needs to run his marathon at the end of October and then rest for 2 weeks, what should he do for the rest of the year?

He doesn’t want to spend 6 weeks with minimal mileage. But he also doesn’t want to ramp up for the last 2 weeks of November and first 2 weeks of December and then drop off again for the last 2 weeks of December.

It is quite a complicated question, but I hope you can get what he is saying.

What to do with your Comrades Marathon training after a marathon

Lindsey Parry: Yes, I understand  completely. In his case I would take 2 weeks off after the marathon and that would then become your rest period. And then I would tick over. Then essentially the 4 weeks or 6 weeks (If I understand the question correctly he just doesn’t know what to do in this time)I would then spend 2 weeks to build myself up to around 40, maybe 50kays a week.

That should then take him into December. Then through December I would build up a little bit more but not too much more, until you get to January. Then when you get to January you can just start following the programme.

Maybe a sensible approach would be to build up from just under 60km a week to around 65, absolute maximum 70km’s a week if you are a Comrades Marathon Bill Rowan kind of runner. Then what will happen is that in January he won’t really build up to much.

He will maintain what he’s done through January and then build with the programme through February. It will serve as really nice platform for him to launch his training from.

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