This is another episode of Ask Coach Parry. The question for today was submitted by Mike Ungerer. He says he relocated from Cape Town to Gauteng in October 2014. Since then he has lost complete interest in running.

In his first week in Gauteng he continued with your bronze Comrades Marathon programme. He battled with his breathing and was constantly tired and his legs feel sluggish. He has reached the stage where his desire for running is just gone. He has also started to eat a lot.

His last race was the Voet 21km just before the relocation. He is 60 years old and currently weighs 88kg’s. And finally, he sleeps a lot. He says please can you help him?

Brad Brown:This is another episode of Ask Coach Parry. The question for today was submitted by Mike Ungerer. He says he relocated from Cape Town to Gauteng in October 2014. Since then he has lost complete interest in running.

In his first week in Gauteng he continued with your bronze Comrades Marathon programme. He battled with his breathing and was constantly tired and his legs feel sluggish. He has reached the stage where his desire for running is just gone. He has also started to eat a lot.

His last race was the Voet 21km just before the relocation. He is 60 years old and currently weighs 88kg’s. And finally, he sleeps a lot. He says please can you help him?

Lindsey Parry: Those symptoms are not unusual for someone moving up from the coast, particularly if you have had long term exposure to living at sea level. It is difficult to adjust to training to altitude. There is less oxygen around. All the feelings that you describe are normal.

How relocation issues can be overcome when training for the Comrades Marathon

There are 2 things that you need to do to overcome that. The first is that with time your oxygen carrying capacity of your blood will improve. But it still will not allow you to run like you used to run when you were at the coast.
The second part of enjoying running up at higher altitude again means that you do have to reduce your previous training speeds by around 7%. You need 7 – 10% slower than you were down at the coast. That will have a similar training effect to running faster at the coast.

You should then also feel a lot more similar to how you were feeling when you were running at the coast. One of the great things about being up in and running in Gauteng, is that we have really amazing running and training groups. So join a running club.

In the Cape, it is just nice to run for the sake of running, and it is beautiful and you have scenery. So running with people is less important. But up in Gauteng it is a great social thing to do – so join a club, meet some people who can also show you some of the better routes to run.

But you are going to have to just tap that intensity down a little bit.