As If Once Isn’t Enough…
COMRADES MARATHON.
We all have our own interpretation of the term ‘endurance’ and on our South African running calendar the Comrades must rate for many as the ultimate challenge in long distance events. For others there always has to be something more……..One such person is Mimi Anderson, a delightfully enthusiastic runner from the UK who has just completed the Double Comrades. Maybe the price of intercontinental air tickets had something to do with it or maybe it’s just her interpretation of that aforementioned word endurance, but she decided to concertina her first up and down Comrades runs into a 24 hr period! No need to come back for next year’s race!
Such a run isn’t without it’s preparation both on the training front and the logistics side to make it all work on the day, or rather night, as in this case. Mimi started running in Durban in the late afternoon the day before Comrades, ran through the night, reaching Pietermaritzburg with plenty of time to spare before joining the other entrants on the start line for the trip back to Durban at 5. 30 am.
We arranged for security along the route (Inchanga at midnight is very dark and remote) and our 2 guards were fantastic – in the early part of the run they negotiated Durban afternoon traffic with great flare, using the combi to shield the runners and cyclist from the plentiful and wild taxi drivers – no such luxuries as road closures. Friend Neil Kapoor was accompanying Mimi as a ‘training run’ (??!!!?)and cyclist Gary Roscoe completed the support group. Our role then turned to an illuminating one – they ran with head torches but were grateful for the extra light from the support vehicle headlights as we followed them closely, in either 1st or 2nd gear, at a speed of about 10km/hr for almost 10hours – my gear box will never be the same again!
Our other big support role was on the nutritional front – after approximately 90min of aerobic exercise the body’s stores of muscle glycogen are depleted and for the remainder of an endurance run it is advisable to replace energy with carbohydrate in the form of energy drinks, gels or food, although the body also resolves its energy from body fat stores and lean muscle mass. We were acting as a mobile feeding station and were travelling slowly enough to pass food and drinks through the window.
We had a quick stop at Drummond, the halfway mark – a stretch, coffee and ablutions – after a serenade from some very vocal supporters (from Bedfordview I’m proud to say!) The temperature dropped quite markedly just before midnight and the runners had to stop again briefly to put on another layer of clothing. Running in the cool temperatures and the dark of night was a definite advantage – the heat of the day can be quite energy sapping on such a long run. And of course they couldn’t see the hills looming up in front of them so they weren’t too stressed out about what lay ahead! They walked up a part of Inchanga and then up all of Polly Shortts’ 2km in a bid to save themselves for the return journey later that day.
Reaching PMB in a respectable time of 9hr50 we set about finding our way to the VIP parking behind the City Hall, and set up camp for long enough to massage legs, have more coffee, peanut butter sandwiches and a change of shirts, a quick tooth brushing and then off to the start-proper, fresh as a daisy!??! There is still not complete agreement in the literature about the effectiveness of post-exercise massage to prevent muscle stiffness and pain but Mimi reports that her legs felt considerably better than she expected once she started the main run. Intensive training and long competitions are accompanied by muscle damage so the pain felt is very real.
I only managed to see Mimi 3 times during the down run. As everyone who has done the Comrades knows, there is always a bad patch (or more!) but you soon get over it. When I saw Mimi at Inchanga she was tired and tearful, telling me she just wanted to lie down!!! Nowhere to do that, I said, so you’d just better keep on going…..now this is one tough girl, she holds the Ladies World Record for the John O’Groats to Lands End run (about1500km) during which she ran the equivalent of 2,5 marathons a day for 12 days in a row, so I knew she’d get through it, just a bit of encouragement needed here and there!
She ran to the finish in a time of 10h50 full of smiles and waving her arms, so good to see. This meant a total running time of 20hrs and 30min. The recovery period following an extreme run of approximately 180km is variable with a lot depending on how much training the athlete did but a general rule of thumb is a day’s rest/easy running for every mile (1.6km) raced which means essentially 5 weeks before efficient training levels return. Knowing Mimi she’ll push the boundaries and get up to something crazy a bit sooner than then.
