Welcome to another edition of Ask Coach Parry. Our question today was submitted by Stuart Miles. This is what he said,

“I ran Two Oceans in under 6 hours in 2013 but was plagued with hamstring injuries during the training and injured myself (foot tendon) shortly after, and could not run the Comrades Marathon - probably due to having increased mileage too fast.

I have not run much this year (10-20k's per week max.) but have been building up leg strength and fitness through spinning/cycling and rode the Momentum 947 Cycle Challenge 2014. My question is whether and how I can now build up my running training towards the Comrades Marathon 2015.

Obviously my main concern is to avoid injury and build up mileage as slow as possible. I have run 4 marathons now with a PB of 3h50 for reference.”

Brad Brown: Welcome to another edition of Ask Coach Parry. Our question today was submitted by Stuart Miles. This is what he said,

“I ran Two Oceans in under 6 hours in 2013 but was plagued with hamstring injuries during the training and injured myself (foot tendon) shortly after, and could not run the Comrades Marathon - probably due to having increased mileage too fast.

I have not run much this year (10-20k's per week max.) but have been building up leg strength and fitness through spinning/cycling and rode the Momentum 947 Cycle Challenge 2014. My question is whether and how I can now build up my running training towards the Comrades Marathon 2015.

Obviously my main concern is to avoid injury and build up mileage as slow as possible. I have run 4 marathons now with a PB of 3h50 for reference.”

Lindsey Parry: That is a very good pb and indicates he should be running the Comrades Marathon in under 10 hours reasonably comfortably.

I think he has gone about dealing with the injuries in the right way, and his body is going to be a lot stronger and he is going to be a lot fitter.

His immediate concern is not building up to quickly. From a fitness point of view, with all the spinning and cycling I think he’s going to need to continue with a bit of that so that he does not become to frustrated.

What is the next step?

He wants to spend the last bit of November and December gradually building up that mileage so that he can hit January running round about 50km’s a week.

Then, from January to get onto the bronze training programme and build himself up towards the Comrades Marathon.

If you have a question  you would like us to answer about training for the Comrades Marathon after an injury, please feel free to pop us an email by using the form on the right hand side of this page.