Comrades Marathon - December WP training programme for 2012 down run

184 day to go and the first 31 of these is a holiday month. If you read the CG article, you will realise that you will be very soon flooded out with new faces, new legs and even better new running talk.

Our rules, for us locals who are doing Comrades for the first time, are basically the same as for CG, that is reel in your running, having time off when needed and no road race longer than 21km. That is the rules. Comrades is a national (and international) race and this is a valuable time to be able to meet and talk with fellow novices throughout the country who are holidaying in our part of the world. For my part, this is particularly dangerous to be left alone as a Comrades novice during December. It would be a very fine idea if most of the Fish Hoek runners who are running Comrades, have a run together from the beach front and use that opportunity to invite the holiday makers.

I wonder how much you have changed already after being on the program for four months. You will probably find you have already installed the outline of a program that may be difficult to change. I feel it is important to have a change in December to arrive totally refreshed on 1st January and rearing to go for six months of training. You dabble around with running with your children, let them beat you in the sprints and show them a thing or two in June next year.

Here is your December training programme.

Objective: to run a mixture of relaxed runs not longer than 21 km

	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4
w/c	05/12/2011	12/12/2011	19/12/2011	26/12/2011
Monday	REST	REST	REST	16km race
Tuesday	8km	8km	8km	REST
Wednesday	8km T/T	8km T/T	8km T/T	8km T/T
Thursday	REST	REST	8km	8km
Friday	8km	8km	8km	8km
Saturday	REST	10km	21km	REST
Sunday	21km race	15km	Christmas Day	25km
Total	45km	49km	53km	65km

Total km for December: 212 km

Recommended races:
26th December - Tokai Manor House

Thought for the month:
Make a Comrades running friend from an up-country visitor.

The Bill Rowan Programme.

The Bill Rowan medallists ran hard at Winelands and need to recuperate for at least a couple of quiet weeks. I recommend no more races for you this year apart from a cautious forest run in the Tokai Manor House run. It would be a good idea for you to join the ordinary novices by not following a rigid daily program each week. Go to the time trials and run shorter Sunday runs.

Don Oliver
November 2011
Cape Town