Have you been so close to your Comrades Marathon goal medal, but just keep on missing it? On this episode of the Ask Coach Parry podcast, Lindsey gives your tips and advice on small things you can charge on race day. Make your next Comrades the year you break that barrier!

Transcript

Brad Brown: Welcome onto this edition of the Ask Coach Parry podcast and a question in from Sarah Munnick today. Lindsey, Sarah was saying, in 2016, she’s going for her fifth Comrades Marathon and she’s still in search of the ever elusive bronze medal.

She says each year she feels that she’s trained harder and more consistently than the previous year, but she’s yet to reach that goal. For 2015 she followed your bronze programme and achieved her best time yet, it was 11:11, but she missed the bronze by those 11 minutes. What are the small things that she can do to make a difference and close that time gap?

Lindsey Parry: Look, the very unfortunate news for her is that she in all likelihood missed it by even less than she realises, when you look at the extra 880m, that was part of the course last year. So ja, that’s a particularly sad one and I think, I’m just doing a very quick sum here.

She effectively lost six and a half minutes with that extra 880m, so it means she missed bronze by five minutes, effectively, and on a normal year. Again, if she was that much closer, who knows what sort of effort she would have been able to put in over the closing 15km to get there.

Down run could be your year

I would say that’s about as close as you’re going to come and we do know that on average the Down run tends to be roughly 10 minutes quicker. Just by going on the down, she’s probably going to get there anyway, but what are the small things that she can do?

She can really make sure that she lines up on race day fresh so that the taper is done 100% correctly, she says she’s trained harder each time, so let’s make sure the training is smarter rather than harder. If you are doing more, just be very sure that the recovery is good, that the taper goes well.

On race day, not wasting any time at all. I think 11 minutes quite often really comes down to race day management. How many times did you stop, even if it was for a couple of seconds to chat to friends or family or to pick something up from the side of the road or at your club tent, how long were you at those places, bathroom breaks.

Look at minimising any stationary time on the route, how much walking did you do, particularly on the hard parts of the route, what was your split going through half way? So make sure that you’re getting as close as possible to the recommended splits, particularly my recommended splits, so that in the second half you do just have that little bit left and that you’re not just bleeding time.

Keep cool and protected from the sun

Other ways to make sure that you’re conserving energy are to make sure you don’t get sunburnt, make sure that you apply enough suntan lotion, carry a sponge with you so that when you get to the water stations you can actually put ice water on you every 3km so that you really do keep cool.

Making sure nutrition is completely waxed, because that again will also play into what your stomach is used to doing, you have to stop for a pit stop, do you have to stop on the side of the road to wee, those kind of things. At 11:11, taking into account those extra 880m, I reckon you’re looking for about five minutes on the down run and so I’m quite confident that you’ll find those and that you come home at worst, 10:55.

BB: There you go, Sarah, best of luck with that and if there’s anything else that we can help you with, don’t forget to be in touch. Until next time, from myself, Brad Brown and Lindsey Parry, it’s cheers.