Ultras not a sport for the illdisciplined
IT’S official! Ultra-running is not my forte. It is too long, too demanding and way too painful. I, on the other hand, am too impatient; too ill-disciplined a runner to not go when my body says I should. And it always says that at the start of every race. Pacing abilities and I are like the parallel lines of a railway line, destined never to meet.
You see just why I am unlikely to ever shine in ultras.
This is actually not a new discovery. It was just confirmed to me yesterday in the most beautiful of world marathons, the Totalsports Two Oceans Marathon. I ran my fifth 56km in the Mother City, and to say the race left me with a bloodied nose would be putting it mildly.
Of course, when you discover that I completed the race in a time of 4hr 41min 40sec, you will beg to differ with my stance. But I know myself, and I am meant to be way better than that time.
I have a 3:52.42 on the apparently more difficult Ou Kaapse Weg route. I even have a 4:15.45: on the selfsame Chappies that smacked my backside yesterday, and while it was not my slowest run – I ran 5:08.21 on debut in 2017 – it was my hardest and most humbling.
It all happened on that notorious long climb called Constantia Nek. Never in the seven years since I started running marathons have I ever walked in a race as much as I did yesterday. It was not because I wanted to walk, as I did in 2022 when, after stopping for a leak, the sub-four-hour bus left me behind and I decided to just enjoy the race and take in the view instead of chasing time.
Yesterday, I was crushed. I cramped for the first time ever, my toes curling up so badly inside my shoes that I was tempted to take them off and sort myself out. I felt pains on my quads, on the back of my thighs, on my calves and even on my shins.
It was torture and I decided to just walk instead of adding more possible injury by forcing myself to run, as the majority of the spectators encouraged me to, fibbing – as they always do – that the finish was just around the corner.
That I’ve come to the conclusion that I must no longer run ultras is because of the ease with which I covered the marathon distance and the first 21.1km in particular. I was flying early on in the race, so much so that I caught up with the A batch of seeding guys as early as the second kilometre, having started two minutes later than they did from batch B.
It all felt good. It was not as though I was over-exerting myself. No, I was very comfortable running at under four minutes per kilometre and I held it until the halfway mark at 28km. That I slowed down a bit was only natural, the combination of the climb up Chapman’s Peak plus that incredibly strong wind ensuring that much.
I got to the marathon mark in 2:56 and thought I could still push for silver.
And while I could put it all down to Constantia Nek being a beast of a climb, the reality is that I am comfortable going up hills in most races. It is just that I had reached my limits at the marathon mark.
I accept that and from henceforth I will never race an ultra. Though I feel I must never run them, I don’t want to say never – not with the 100th running of the Comrades Marathon around the corner.