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<\/a>Why about 90 km?<\/strong><\/p>\nVic Clapham, the Comrades conceiver, as recorded in Morris Alexander\u2019s, The Comrades Marathon Story<\/span> set the distance because of two<\/p>\n ideas.<\/p>\n He knew from experience that an army recruit, even one from behind desk could, with more or less 6 months training do a 40-mile (~64 km) march in full kit, carrying weapons, ammunition, perhaps a cigarette or two and a letter from home.<\/p>\n Training was one thing. In the field, the soldier would have to complete the distance and then maybe have to confront an enemy. So he had to have a bit of extra energy too.<\/p>\n The ~55 miles of Comrades without army baggage, is of the same order. To complete the run a \u201creasonably able person\u201d needs about 6 months of training. If the training went okay, there might be a little extra left to party after the run, at least until seven o\u2019clock.<\/p>\n Vic Clapham, also knew about the London to Brighton distance in the UK. People ran, walked and when cars were invented, drove with a flag-waver walking in front from London to Brighton. Its distance of about 54 miles was similar to the distance between Pietermaritzburg and Durban. And, if you don\u2019t know the distance of the London to Brighton Marathon was formalised in 1953, a very good year for things to be born, at 54 miles and 198 yards which is 87.085 km.<\/p>\n I wonder though if our Vic had any idea just how much the distance he chose would move so many runners. It has satisfied over 100\u00a0000 runners since 1921, many of them over and over again and many more will hear its call.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure he thought then that even in peace time, even when the virtue of wars evaporated, the road, distance, those hills and twisting cambers would give so many a taste of perfection. In what he did, he created a perfect allure.<\/p>\n The long and the short of it <\/strong><\/p>\n The long and short of the Comrades Marathon distance, is that it is neither too long nor too short. It\u2019s about exactly right.<\/p>\n The Comrades distance is long enough to take runners out of their comfort zones and keep them there long enough to change them. No matter how well we train its going to get to us.\u00a0 No matter how good a runner we are, the distance will make us dig deeper. No matter how far behind the get-the-best-time effort level we run, the distance will make us work.<\/p>\n Much longer and fewer would do it. That would be a pity. Sharing the run with many others is part of perfecting the experience.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not that runners can\u2019t cope with longer runs. Even I could. But the training, getting the body and mind right, the event itself, would take too much out of their lives.<\/p>\n Part of the rightness of the Comrades distance is while it allows us to get the most out of endurance running, it also allows us to keep the balance between our running and the other parts of our lives – family, work and community lives. It\u2019s actually al lot more than balance. Comrades adds a glow to the other parts of our lives.<\/p>\n At the same time, the Comrades distance can have a dark side. To be more precise, it can create a dark side in runners. It\u2019s easy to do too much: to get drained; obsessed; to neglect things that need to be done; make bad decisions about running when sick or with injuries; even to push others into doing something that is not good for them.<\/p>\n While Comrades is a long run, it\u2019s also short enough to be sane. Short enough to almost guarantee success for those who do the training. Short short enough too, to allow us to fit training for it into our everyday lives.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s never too short.\u00a0Shorter runs don\u2019t always test all our frailties. They allow us to sneak through. That\u2019s not to say that there\u2019s no place for shorter runs. They have their own possibilities of perfection. If nothing else, you can\u2019t really run Comrades without doing many, actually very many, shorter runs. Even 1 or 2 km recovery runs when you need to.<\/p>\n But the point is that coping with a marathon is easier than coping with two. Coping with 56 km and 60 km runs is one thing, but Comrades is just that much harder. It\u2019s the last 30 km that are the problem, not the first 30 km. Nor even the first 50 km. The further the run, the harder each kilometre becomes. It\u2019s like running faster and faster: the more we approach the speed of light, the \u201cheavier\u201d we become and less we can actually go at the speed of light. If that\u2019s that too weird for this story then I apologize.<\/p>\n Anyway, its distance means the Comrades is always far enough to test us right into our core.<\/p>\n More about the distance next time in The perfect distance in part 2<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n