What can I say about this years Comrades training?????
When 2013 ended I was so pleased and really expected 2014 to be an improvement, can one ever be more wrong. The only thing that has gone well for me this year is my training, but other parts of my life have not been as successful as would be nice. My 85 year old mom broke her leg in December, she never walked again eventually passing away in April, just ten days after Liz's Aunt who was 93, having also fallen and broken her leg and passing away from complications a few weeks later!! My work has not produced enough income this year I am working on some new ventures so hopefully it will improve, Liz's job situation is not easy mostly personnel issues but.... I suppose just a normal year?
Anyway this is supposed to be about my training... I achieved a 10k pb on my only 10k race of the year , getting closer to the 65 minute. I will continue working on speed for the rest of this year. This year we tried to do more back to backs, we did Tuks 21 followed by Pirates 21 in Feb. These are really good as you walk on the second day on tired legs but you do not suffer the same effects as a marathon/long race. In March I did my first Om die dam 50k which was my longest walk since Comrades 2013 having only done a 32 in the interim!! It was a toughie but it did help build strength. We also managed to do the Ford 21 followed by the Harcourts 32 as back to backs , the Ford was fast and flat and the Harcourts was pretty hilly but not too bad. I still managed a pb on the 32 which was great.
Our April training was really great, managed 401km for the month, that was a well achieved goal. We like to do some strange or different races so did the Bergvillle to Ladysmith 52. It was a good race but the profile seemed to downhill near the end but had a slow poison from 42 to about 49 which was quite hard. Liz and I both finished well followed by night at Tendele in the Berg where we did a 16k hike that in my mind I thought was about 7ks, that hurt a bit but helped the recovery. We managed our usual 100km over the Easter weekend, there are organised routes for this but we just do our own thing, I carry a day pack with drinks and food which alleviates seconds and makes us pretty much independent.
In May we did our usual Wally 21 where I had sore shins for the first 7kms but I did manage to accelerate through the race which was good. 4 days later we did Colgate 32 normally the coldest race of the year but this year was warm, I did a 7 minute PB which was very satisfyimg. Liz is struggling with nausea and did not feel great after this race. We are now trying biltong as a stomach stabiliser which seems to help.
So in the end I had done 1421km in training for Comrades, Liz did 1550kms and neither of us actually missed any training day this year because of injury or colds/flu. That is quite a record.
When 2013 ended I was so pleased and really expected 2014 to be an improvement, can one ever be more wrong. The only thing that has gone well for me this year is my training, but other parts of my life have not been as successful as would be nice. My 85 year old mom broke her leg in December, she never walked again eventually passing away in April, just ten days after Liz's Aunt who was 93, having also fallen and broken her leg and passing away from complications a few weeks later!! My work has not produced enough income this year I am working on some new ventures so hopefully it will improve, Liz's job situation is not easy mostly personnel issues but.... I suppose just a normal year?
Anyway this is supposed to be about my training... I achieved a 10k pb on my only 10k race of the year , getting closer to the 65 minute. I will continue working on speed for the rest of this year. This year we tried to do more back to backs, we did Tuks 21 followed by Pirates 21 in Feb. These are really good as you walk on the second day on tired legs but you do not suffer the same effects as a marathon/long race. In March I did my first Om die dam 50k which was my longest walk since Comrades 2013 having only done a 32 in the interim!! It was a toughie but it did help build strength. We also managed to do the Ford 21 followed by the Harcourts 32 as back to backs , the Ford was fast and flat and the Harcourts was pretty hilly but not too bad. I still managed a pb on the 32 which was great.
Our April training was really great, managed 401km for the month, that was a well achieved goal. We like to do some strange or different races so did the Bergvillle to Ladysmith 52. It was a good race but the profile seemed to downhill near the end but had a slow poison from 42 to about 49 which was quite hard. Liz and I both finished well followed by night at Tendele in the Berg where we did a 16k hike that in my mind I thought was about 7ks, that hurt a bit but helped the recovery. We managed our usual 100km over the Easter weekend, there are organised routes for this but we just do our own thing, I carry a day pack with drinks and food which alleviates seconds and makes us pretty much independent.
In May we did our usual Wally 21 where I had sore shins for the first 7kms but I did manage to accelerate through the race which was good. 4 days later we did Colgate 32 normally the coldest race of the year but this year was warm, I did a 7 minute PB which was very satisfyimg. Liz is struggling with nausea and did not feel great after this race. We are now trying biltong as a stomach stabiliser which seems to help.
So in the end I had done 1421km in training for Comrades, Liz did 1550kms and neither of us actually missed any training day this year because of injury or colds/flu. That is quite a record.
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