RACE REPORT: Comrades Down by Jake Kolnik
After next to no sleep, I anxiously forced down my oats and meticulously put on my race kit. It felt like I was armouring up for the biggest battle of my life, and as it turns out, it probably was.
I haven’t been running for very long, around three years, and have strangely managed to achieve all my goals to this point in my running journey. But this time, my goal terrified me. I would go for silver (7h:30), and I had stupidly told every person I knew, and a lot of people I didn’t know too. I was either about to achieve brilliance or never be allowed to set foot in the Deep South again!
I decided (with the help of coach Parry who I met at the expo the day before), that the only possibility of me achieving the impossible would be to run the even more impossible “negative split”. I studied previous years’ results, and strangely almost nobody achieves this despite the last 30km being predominantly downhill (allegedly).
We got through the formalities, with a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye, and then we were off! It was a particularly warm morning in Pietermaritzburg, and I glanced at my watch at 3km out, and to my horror, my ticker was ticking overtime, I was about to blow up…. 183 BPM! “Calm down you doos!” I told myself. I listened….. slowed down a touch, concentrated on my breathing and running form, and managed to get my heart rate down to 150 BPM. I found my rhythm coming down Polly’s, and the KM’s started ticking by. I was running good splits, and I was a little ahead of my desired pace, however I felt that I was outputting 95% effort, I knew this would not be sustainable….. I’d like to blame the heat, but perhaps I was just having a bad day.
If you know the down run course, you’d know its 56km of UP, before you go “DOWN”. My goal was to maintain my pace until 56KM, and then freewheel home to pick up my silver. With grit and determination, I managed to get to 56km 1 minute off target. I thought “I have this, just jump on the rollercoaster and then go pick up my silver….”. PROBLEM, no down….. just undulating flats, ups, and downs. This was when I questioned my life decisions, but I managed to remain strong, and soldiered on…. I eventually got to Fields Hill. It was down, no mistake, but not the good kind. More like standing on the edge of a cliff… I ran it well, but it still took its toll on me, because the minute it turned up again, and it did, very up, in the form of COWIES, I tried to run up, but there was nothing left, and with a heavy heart, I gently placed my silver medal on the foot of Cowies, and did my first walk of the day.
With 14 KM to go I saw Coach Parry on the side of the road, and we looked at each other. No words were needed. It was obvious, he was definitely thinking “well he gave a good go”, either that, or “what a fu&*ing loser”. I continued to run the downs and walk the ups, and made my way to Durban. It obviously wasn’t the result I had planned for, and I have come up with a few excuses: I blame the heat. I pushed too hard in Two Oceans It was my ITB/Piriformis issues The truth is, I just wasn’t trained/conditioned enough. My desired pace of 5min/km ended up being 5:12min/km, and I ended up with a time of 7h51. I am logging this as a success, and perhaps the best failure of my life.
