Comrades Marathon lessons from Alberto Salazar

It has always been thought that in order to win Comrades you need to feed off the bunch (a bus for elite athletes). Comrades is too a long race to do it on your own. The other myth was that you need to do as many long run as possible and another was that you need to training on the terrain that you’ll be racing on i.e if you going to be racing on asphalt, then your training runs need to be on asphalt.

All of the above where dispelled by Alberto Salazar. When Alberto Salazar lined up for the 1994 Comrades Marathon he had come out of retirement and hadn’t run a single race in 5 years. Despite boasting a 2:08 marathon time, he’d never raced beyond the distance. In preparing for the Comrades Marathon he did one 65km run on his treadmill, in fact all of his long runs where done on a treadmill and were never further than 30km (he clocked 200km per week). When lining up for the race he had all intentions of winning the race and not just being competitor.  These are his own words ‘I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think I could win … the race is in the hands of God’.

This is how the 1994 race unfolded.

At the starting line were Charly Doll 1993 champion, all time Comrades great Bruce Fordyce, Ironman and former para-trooper Nick Bester, Two Oceans record holder Thompson Magawana  and the  young effervescent Theo Rafiri of Rockies. Yes it was a very competitive field. In typical style, the “TV runners” or “Rabbits” set out first while the gold contenders sat in the pack getting out of Durban.

By the time they got to Westville there were two distinct buses the “Bester bus” which included Thompson Magwana and “Fordyce bus” slightly behind. Ahead of them was Philimon Mogashane (former gold medalist). By the time they got to Cowies Hill Mogashane was still leading. Getting out of Pinetown Dirkie Moolman (a mountain running expert from Escout) was ahead, he crested Fields Hill first, 1 minute ahead of Alberto Salazar.

At the bottom  of Botha’s Hill Salazar started catching up with Dirkie Moolman and he crested Botha's Hill first, he went through half way in just under 2:45

I guess everyone was waiting for Salazar to crash, after all he was now in uncharted territory beyond the 42 km mark, but he did not. He devoured the mighty Inchanga (with a 3:45 minute lead time) like a man possessed and showing no signs of fatigue.  He went through Cato Ridge and Camperdown Village and crested Polly Shorts without any challenger insight. In Bruce Fordyce's famous words “Whoever crests Polly Shortts first will win the up run” and so he did breasting the tape in a time of 5:38:39.

Alberto Salazar at Inchanga with 39 km to go.

Take aways from the above.

1.    In order to do well at Comrades (aiming for a win or “just a finish”) you need to run fast, fast over shorter distances i.e. 5km, 10km, 21km and standard marathon. Salazar’s personal bests include:

o   5 000 meters 13:11

o   10 000 meters  27:25:

o   Marathon 2:08:13

There’s a reason why Rand Athletic Club (RAC), one of the biggest and oldest clubs in South African, hosts a 10km run just two weeks before Comrades Marathon and that is to “fine-tune” your body for the journey between Durban and Pietermaritzburg. Urban legend has it that if you couldn’t run the RAC 10km under 37mins you were better off staying home and watching the race on TV or better yet seconding the other club runners who had run sub 37 mins.

2.    Do not do too many long runs, now this is a tricky one. How many is too many? I don’t have an answer to that, however what is important is that Long Slow Distance (LSD) should be exactly that, they should be run at a slow pace and should not be confused with racing or fartleks. More often than not we see runners week in week out racing marathons and failing at comrades (I too have fallen victim to that, numerous times), it is because the body has not been trained to run at anticipated Comrades race pace.

3.    Lastly, do not shy away from training on different terrain. asphalt is probably the most common yet unforgiving that most runners train and race on. Go run on grass either on a golf course, grass track or a parkrun, run on gravel or tartan. Most Kenyans do their training on gravel even the famous Kamariny Stadium has a gravel track, it is the unevenness of terrain that makes them strong and not prone to injuries. I am not a fan of treadmill running and only run on it when there’s inclement weather and won’t run longer than 40mins.

Kenyan runners training in the famous Kamariny stadium on a gravel track