An exercise to get your mind right for the Comrades Marathon
Visualisation – making it concrete
Get a profile or map of the route. You can look at a the small one on the the official Comrades website http://www.comrades.com/Route/Route-Map.aspx or a more detailed one at mapmyrun.com at http://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/view/2640629. You also can rely on your memory if you’ve run it before.
If you have the patience and know the way, you can make your own route on one of the internet mapping tools. Doing that takes you through every step of the way.
You can use a map to help you visualise the run. The idea is to go through the whole run in your mind before the race, imagining the hills, the down hills, the distances run, how you feel, the people along the way. Go through the route, kilometer by kilometer; the whole route, the whole way, slowly.
Start if your like with getting up early before the run, or in the slow (c)rushing crowded start in the echoes of that canon-boom; ease into the first few hundred meters, finding space to run, checking the state of the moon. Walking again as the crush concentrates up the first freeway on-ramp …. 86 km to go.
Then go on.
You don’t need to go through the whole run all at once. Take a few nights. I do it at night while drifting towards sleep.
Making it concrete
When you have imagined your way through the first 20 km, then up the ~4 km cambered curves of Fields Hill and the gentle climbs under the trees that follow, think about how you feel on your average 30 km training run.
Most of us who have done reasonable or even minimum distance training, can run, get to, ~30 km more or less intact. Fine. So it’s a good Comrades mind-bend to imagine seeing the distance marker-board next to the road up to Hillcrest that says “55 km to go”. 32 km in the legs only 55 km to go. Only 55 km on 32 km used legs. And what lies immediately ahead is the climb into Hillcrest, the dip down to the bottom of the looming Botha’s Hill: big, the second highest point in the race.
A Bruce Fordyce comment I once read always comes to mind in this part of the run. It went something like, “Don’t worry about the numbers. They are too big. They can scare you. Just run to the next marker board.” And so you go, one km at a time.
You can make yourself feel better imagining along the more or less down (except for the few ups), to the halfway that follows Botha’s Hill. Where you can run let gravity do some of the work. Nearly like a cyclist freewheeling. Hoping that your training has toughened your legs enough for the downs. Because you aren’t even halfway yet and you should still be feeling ok especially as you have another 45 km to run.
You can also imagine getting to halfway, 43.5 km. Lots of people, music, the booming beat thumps up towards you on the road down. Relate halfway to the last standard marathon you ran. How you felt at the end of it. Then think about running another 43.5 km. Take the cheer of the crowd, music, volunteers. Then ease into Inchanga Bank, so-called; big hill, so-encountered. Get to the top and its easy, only 40 km to go. Except that it also gets harder the further you go.
Next you can think of the 60 km mark at Cato Ridge. Only 27 km to go. Relate that to your longest training run and how you felt then. If you got your taper right you should be feeling much better during Comrades after 60 km than during your training, as you have sharpened and rested before the big run. Should be. Could be.
Keep going.
Eventually imagine the highest point of the run, Umlaas Road, ~79 km done and just over 18 to go. Getting to the teens makes it easier to think that the run will finish, one day.
Of course there’s Polly Shorrts. Face it. Before the run. At the bottom it’s maybe 9 or 10 km to go. Get it right in your mind now. It’s the last obstacle. It’s hard, no question. Less because it’s steep. More because it’s yet another relentless hill and you have little strength left.
But its only a hill. It ends. All you have to do is go up it. And up. And keep going up. If you need it you have reserve energy – one tank of courage, one tank of deep-survival. use some of that. Or save it for the after party. Which isn’t too far away.
That’s it. If the TV camera points at you, get up a grin, pull out a comb.
Face the mind-benders before the run. It’s less scary when you are out there if you know what’s coming. The terror won’t eat you up.
Out there you can just concentrate on keeping going forward as best and fast as you can, sipping water as you go.
Get the Comrades spirit, the inner strength that rises you to the occasion, the goodwill towards others, start rising now so it can carry you to the end.
Read here for a second exercise in preparing your mind for Comrades