My Comrades Experience

Everyone has always said the training is the hard part and the race is the glory run. 99.9% of the time I would agree but comrades is really something different. We trained for it perfectly, I had won a 18km race in South Africa over the hardest terrain I have ever seen, run our first Ultra with a 52km race in Chattworth in Durban again running a great race even with showing up after the gun had gone off and our runs to the bushes and to top it off a competitive 10k race which I was on pace for 33mins unti going off course with 2km to go but none the less we were ready. We had even done 70km of the course on a training run and it had gone quite well despite the distance and driving time.

To be honest this was a dream come true for me and I got to run in one of the greatest ultra marathons in History with 24,000 runners registered. Unfortunately the night before saw alot of concerns with us both getting food poisonng. Krystal and I knew this could be problematic but with our luck we just laughed it off since we knew something had to happen with our luck.

Morning of I still felt great, ate a huge breakfast consisting of cornflakes, milk and imodium. I still thought it possible to run a good race. We were excited and strangly positive. Coming to the start line I could see all of my fellow runners dancing to various music and really just making the moment even better. 10minutes before the race, im pumped and turn on my watch that I had charged before heading to Pietermartizburg and nothing, I try again and low battery. The worst thing that could have happened just did and no watch to time or pace myself through 89km really shock me up since I would never know how fast im running, its really a mental thing. Regardless I but it aside and ran what I felt was right, going through 5k had never felt so easy and im guessing im running around 19 or 20mins for 5k, at 9km something went wrong and I feel pain inside my knee and hamstrings and I know its dehydration and my muscles are tightening up. When your at 9km and thinking what am I going to do about the next 80km its a scarry thing.

I was still holding pace through 20km but im limping, at 30km the limp has slowed me down considerably and I still remember looking up and thinking I have to run another 59km and im in so much pain. This was the hardest race of my life, at 50km I have already stopped about a dozen times to use the bushes as my imodium isn't working. The one thing im proud of is that I never walked one of those damned hills no matter how bad it got. I have never walked in a race in over 13 years and the one thought I kept in my head was that I had never run further than 70km and if I could make it that far then I could walk. I made it to 75km and my knee finally gave out and I had to sit along side the road trying to stretch it out and walk until I could move it enough to run again. I ran the last 19km in over 2hrs and normally I would run it in just over an hour. Every km I would have to walk the downs and run up the hills until about 6km to go it seemed as though the roads were straighter at least enough to take some of the pressure of my knee and run somewhat normally. I had planned on breaking 6hrs and in the end settled for 8:02.

This was in my mind a great race, it wasn't a race for time or place but for mere survival. So many times I prayed that I wouldn't die and that I would finish as well as the many tears that came from the pain of trying but Comrades taught me just how much you can truly push your body and that anything is possible.

Thank you to everyone for your help and kind words through all of this, without you this wouldn't be possible.

Darl