How to Qualify for Kona - THE RUN



Run

Training

Shorter runs during the week, but did Westcliff stairs at least once a week. Excellent gauge of fitness (and fatigue.)
Longer run routes on Sundays, on hard routes. (I couldn’t push distance, through fear of injury, so really focused on shorter/harder routes.) Max distance was 27km, and should’ve done a few 32km runs. Consistency again therefore the key. Also finished training by 9am on Sunday for the week. Key to ensure that the weekend wasn’t stacked up with sets not completed during the week. Finishing early on Sunday resulted in lots of time to recover for the swim set on Monday morning.
Ran all the 21km events around Jhb area in Jan & Feb, like Dischem, PnP and Pirates.

Race Day Strategy & Nutrition (written for a work colleague)
• Lap 1: Walk every feed station and take on water and something solid. They’ll have half banana’s, energy bars and potatoes. No coke. Take gels.
• Lap 2: Walk every second* feed station and as above. (* its psychology in that you are improving). Try to avoid the coke still, but keep taking gels.
• Lap3: Hammer it home overtaking everyone, downing coke, taking many more gels, anything goes…

Race Day actual
Including transition times I got onto the run course having to do a 3h38 marathon to break 10hrs. This meant running 5min/km, plus 8 minutes to “play” with. Not a lot, but sort’ve in the range. The first km I ran in 4m30s and felt like a rockstar. I was very aware that things can go horribly wrong, especially after such a bike leg. I certainly didn’t want to become a statistic and run a 4h30-5h marathon after putting so much into the bike. “Fortunately” it became clear 8km into the run that breaking 10hrs wasn’t an option. I then reverted back to part 2 of the strategy (and the most important) which was to run the last lap (of 3) or indeed 21km well. I therefore conserved and fuelled up as much as I could, finishing the run in 3h50. Run position: 91st

Nutrition on Race
Water sachet at each station with minor sips. Very cautious of drinking too much and blood rushing to the stomach.
• Coke from the second lap.
• 3 * gels per lap
• 2 * half bananas

Ideal World
Done more heavy mileage in February and spent more time running with others, at least once a week. Also needed to run more at intended/desired race pace of 5min/km. I was adopting the cycling strategy of training well within limits and training at 5m15s, which as it turned out was actual race splits.

No comments:

Post a Comment