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Comrades 2017
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Planning to run up and down box hill
It appears that those hills all have a steepness of between 5 to 7%
I'm guessing there are steeper kicks within those but average out around 5 -7%
I suppose 6% is pretty tough when it's over 3km long...
Just shove the decimal place on the steepness ratio one to the left to get the percentage - all they are doing is dividing the height by the length.
I suppose if you walk up these hills like I do they will seem more beastly and gargantuan than if you jog or run up them and get them out of the way. I like Mr Fordyce's words in that doc; preservation is key to my success all the way.
RR - I originally thought everyone was singing "When we are together", not, "Wen' uyabaleka" - I still sing my words.
Becca - road shoes should be fine - there were a few places where the canal kind of spilled over massive stone slabs right across the path when I ran it, but there had been quite a lot of damage due to floods earlier in the year and they had drained large sections. I think those were being used to keep the water level low, despite that, some careful stepping and all was fine. I recall a section of a few miles was completely shut too due to those repairs and we had to run on roads through some town bits, so I did not cover all the towpath that day. The vast majority of what I ran was either city concrete or reasonably good trail.
Keep positive seren; its amazing what the system can achieve; hoping you recover soon.
Seren-how's it going? Have you seen the Physio yet?
Thanks everyone for the info about hills - very useful. I get quite a lot of hills running in the croydon area, as well as the route to/from work over crystal Palace hill, but none going on for so long as some of the Comrades hills.
My nice hilly 24 miles on Sunday didn't happen, due to a bout of norovirus. I've not run since a parkrun on Saturday. Grr. Feeling a lot better today, so might go for a little run by myself this evening if I feel like it when I finally get home. Need to be fully fit for Sunday as I have a 6-hour Challenge to run with SVN!
All Comrades hills are very runnable in isolation. It is the combination of relentless up, relentless change in gradient and distance that give the difficulties. Things get hard from Inchanga. BR and faster will run a large portion of that. 9+ hour runners can increasing walk. Also the long slow ascent from the bottom of Inchanga is hard after the section from the top of Botha's to the bottom of Inchanga. Little Pollys and Big Pollys is inevitable very hard. Not many run all the way up Big Pollys, even at silver medal level. A BR medalist can even walk most the way up if they have time (50 minutes from the top to the finish at BR pace). Bronze and VC medals would pretty much all walk unless facing a cut-off or medal boundary. The trick is not to exhaust yourself early on by running too fast, particularly up the early hills. Remember that it is a long, long way from Durban to Pitermaritzburg by foot.
14km last night - a little pain and off to see biokineticist this afternoon
Becca, I agree; if you want to keep your Sarumans white then run in your Gandalfs this weekend. Good luck to you and Mr Z in your events on Sunday!
2 mile walk for me on the canal this affy, all I have managed since Sunday's aborted 3. Things seem to be improving though, as usual I am probably being lazy and over cautious, must go for a run soon.
I had a great run last night - not long but first run in a bit where my legs weren't tired! looking forward to running in the evenings without headtorches!
Im in 2 minds as to what to do this weekend - Manchester next weekend is where I am targeting a faster see-where-i-actually-am marathon so the plan for this weekend was always to take it super easy. I ran up at QE park on Wednesday and there has been a load of logging works going on so the already very hilly and muddy route has been cut up and is extra hard work.
Im thinking I may be better suited doing a back to back weekend on the roads, still logging decent miles without needed huge amounts of recovery time
Hope you're feeling spritely soon Lowrez
Speaking of Manchester: which part of the city are you staying at Seren, SS, Lowrez? I'll be in the south of the city but will have the car so can be mobile. Would you fancy meeting for dinner the night before or in a pub after the run for an isotonic pint?
We're staying somewhere near West Didsbury train station wherever that is in relation to the Manchester city but we're with friends who are driving so not sure about when we're available etc
Because of going away next weekend and a busy 3 days coming up I have today just done the second of my really long runs. 28 miles with 900m ascent. My legs are now somewhat weary.The camber really got to me in the end. Neither the roads, pavements or trails were level and I really noticed it in the last third, but pleased to have got that out the way with some decent hills. Can't possibly imagine doing twice that.
Apparently I just earned my eight year anniversary badge on here.