Friday - 6.5 km
Sunday - 42.195 km
Running the Kampala Marathon was, as expected, much harder than running the Copenhagen Marathon. My finishing time was 4 hours and 18 minutes. Not exactly record breaking. Nevertheless, I'm more than happy with it.
There were moments of suffering that I won't forget about anytime soon. The sun was relentless and I was close to getting seriously dehydrated, so there wasn't really any other option than to walk for a it after each watering station and drink until the dizziness and the heavy tingling sensation in the arms was gone. On the Northern Bypass and in the hills of Mengo I struggled. In short, it was a hard run at times, but I completed it and thats what counts...
18,000 people have signed up for the Comrades Marathon next year. Registation has closed. Fortunately I signed up and paid some time back, and with my 4:18 minutes run on Sunday, I have qualified for the Comrades. I'm in. The first part of my plan held up.
Last night I decided to aim for running the 89 kilometers in less than 9 hours. There is a lot of statistics available on the internet about this particular run. On average, around 20% the participants do not finish. And only around 20% manage to run the distance in less than 9 hours. All that remains now is to run the 1,600 or so training kilometers in order to get fit enough for it. There are 172 days to go. That's less than 10 kilometers per day. How hard can it be?
Ad finem
Marathon Madsen
Great run. I did it last year and it was brutal! I think it is definitely fair to say that any Kampala time can have 30 minutes taken off to give a fair assessment of how well you did.
ReplyDeleteHow did you get on in the comrades afterwards? I'd be really interested to read as this seems to be the same path as I am trying to follow.
Hi Simon,
ReplyDeleteThanks for getting in touch!
I never went to SA for the comrades. In early April that year, just 7 weeks before the Comrades, I suffered a serious injury in my right Achilles tendon and were unable to put on running shoes, let alone run. Not sure exactly what happened, but I’m pretty sure it was due to bad training planning on my side. I didn’t start the training early enough and over did it. I had been doing 70-80 kms per week for a while at that point. As you can imagine I was devastated when I realized I couldn’t participate.
I’m training for the Kampala Marathon again this year and expect to do much better now that I know not to underestimate the dehydration factor. I went for a 29 km training run here in Bugolobi yesterday, and it went so well that I signed up for the 2013 Comrades today! The dream lives on.
How about you, are you running KLA marathon this year and have you signed up for Comrades? Do you live in Kampala?
Cheers,
Thomas