Comrades Marathon Bill Rowan Medal – How Fast Must You Run?

Welcome back to another episode of Ask Coach Parry. Over the last few days we have been chatting about those time goals over the shorter distances for the various Comrades Marathon medals.

Today, let us look at the Comrades Marathon Bill Rowan’s sub 9. A sub 9 Comrades Marathon is great going and if you look at the percentage of people that actually get it, you are in the very small minority. It is a wonderful achievement, if somebody is looking at a sub 9 Comrades Marathon, what should they be looking at 10 km, half marathon and marathon times?

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Brad Brown: Welcome back to another episode of Ask Coach Parry. Over the last few days we have been chatting about those time goals over the shorter distances for the various Comrades Marathon medals.

Today, let us look at the Comrades Marathon Bill Rowan’s sub 9. A sub 9 Comrades Marathon is great going and if you look at the percentage of people that actually get it, you are in the very small minority. It is a wonderful achievement, if somebody is looking at a sub 9 Comrades Marathon, what should they be looking at 10 km, half marathon and marathon times?

LINDSEY PARRY: This is my favourite Comrades Marathon medal because this is really about a race giving ordinary people a chance to do something extraordinary. Full time working people, not natural runners, that can train and get a sub 9 hour Comrades.

This is a really classic Comrades Marathon medal. So your 10 km time, you want to be pretty close to 45 minutes so maybe between 45 and 48, you know the calculated number is 46 minutes, then your half marathon, you want to be pretty close to 1 hour 40 so 1 hour 40, 1 hour 42.

A Comrades Marathon Bill Rowan is an extraordinary achievement

Then your 42 km time, you are looking at a 3½ hour marathon and I will put an asterisk on there and say that females, 3 hours 40 because females tend to pace themselves so much better on Comrades race day, 3 hours 30 for males, 3 hours 40 for females.

It does take training almost as hard as you need to train to get a Comrades Marathon silver medal, so it takes a huge commitment. 46 minutes is not easy for a lot of people. But again, it is one of those things where 46 or 45 minutes in a 10km, if you are really dedicated and train hard, it is achievable for an enormous number of people.

It is probably not a medal that runners are going to get year in and year out because of the amount of time it takes. But a fairly experienced Comrades Marathon runner who decides that “I want to run a really good Comrades Marathon this year” and has got a little bit running ability, they can put their back against it for a year and come out with a sub 9 hour Comrades Marathon and that is really something to be proud of.