Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Comrades

I've been doing a lot of pondering about my various running plans for next year since my last entry on the subject, and in particular whether to aim for Comrades next June. Normally, if asked whether I'd like to spend my birthday running about 90km from Durban to Pietermaritzburg I'd mutter something about preferring to spend it in the pub, but, well, last night Darth Vader came down from the planet Vulcan and said that if I didn't enter Comrades next year, he'd melt my brain. As well as the brain-melting stuff, Comrades is one of the world's great races - and it's a seriously competitive race for an ultramarathon, which might explain why certain darlings of the US ultramarathon scene haven't made an appearance there yet.

I should be able to put myself in a reasonable position to finish Comrades at least slightly respectably (before the cutoff gun, in other words) with some diligent training between now and June. The good news is that the kind of hilly road races and cross-country which typify the British winter racing scene make for excellent endurance training, and aiming for a spring marathon should help things along as well. The only obstacle is the need to run a qualifying marathon between now and next June, but as the qualifying time is 5:00 that should hopefully not present a problem...

Anyway, entries for next year haven't even opened yet, so I'll see how I feel over the next couple of months (and particularly at Dublin on 31 October) before deciding whether or not I really want to go and run a terribly long way in South Africa next summer (well, austral winter).