Tag: Comrades

Today is that historic day when registrations for the 85th Comrades Marathon, the world’s largest ultramarathon, begin. The race will happen on May 30th, 2010, and 20,000 runners are expected to run over the countless hills between the cities of Pietermaritzburg and Durban in South Africa that day, all of them running the historic route 89 Kilometers (56 Miles) long, in a ‘down run’. In fact, it is also referred to as The Valley of a Thousand Hills.

Date: Sunday, 30 May 2010
Start: 05h30 at the City Hall in Pietermaritzburg
Finish: 17h30 at Sahara Stadium, Kingsmead in Durban
Distance: 89km – 56 miles

The official website of the event www.comrades.com, currently seems to be down in anticipation of the event launch today, must be coming up anytime soon now. However, an alternative site is available, which is the Mr. Price website, who are the official IT support for the event, and they seem to have setup a duplicate website of the actual Comrades site. This website can be seen at:

http://www.mrpricesport.co.za/Comrades/

and this website too has a link to Register Online, which is not yet active. So, just wait for some more time. The website also seems to have a live registration counter, displaying the number of people who have already registered, which is currently obviously at zero.

The registrations starting from September 1st are for previous Comrades Runners only, and are capped at 15,000 entries and close on Oct 31st. For Novice (first time) runners, registrations will start from Nov 1st, and will be capped at 5,000 entries. This will close on Nov 31st. Check more details on the entry criteria here.

Qualification
All registered runners must qualify for the Comrades marathon by running an IAAF certified marathons within 5 hours (or other distances in specified times). The details of various group qualifying times can be found here.  

Qualifying period: 24 May 2009 to 26 April 2010

Comrades Marathon: Worlds largest ultramarathon, and 89 kilometers of joy!

Well actually, its only 297 days to go, but hey, I was just 3 days late in writing this post, and 300 looks cool in the title, so why not :). Anyway, the fact is that the time is running out fast. It was not too long back when I decided upon doing this, and started training with about 13 months to go, and here we are, not even 10 months now.

Less than a month remains to Sep 1st, when the registrations start for the previous Comrades participants (for first timers, registrations start Nov 1st). I am also excited about the rolling out of a brand new website design for the event website in September. Frankly, the existing design looks particularly bland and dull, and I really want to see more energy, more style, and more enthusiasm in the look.

As for my personal training progress in July, well there was none. I have been undergoing treatment for lower back pain at Back 2 Fitness, and though the pain (or rather discomfort) has not reduced considerably, the strengthening exercises would probably help me in the long run, and avoiding any injuries going ahead. I did my first run after more than a month today, a slow and easy 5K. The pain does not bother me in my running, which is good.

I also got updates from African Link Tours, the official tour operators for Comrades marathon 2010. Below is the price summary for their various packages.