The organisers of this year’s Cape Town Marathon really did a great job with the event. The marketing around the event was great and the finish area was more festive than the previous year. This event is going from strength to strength and will in time become a major big city marathon.
On the day the weather was great. The temperature was relatively cool with not a cloud or hint of wind in sight. With the course being flat and fast the conditions were set for lots of attempts at personal bests.
Water stations were well manned by plenty of volunteers cheering the runners on. I try to thank every marshal that I run past since these guys are giving up their time to volunteer and make sure the event goes smoothly.
There were a few complaints after the event.
The most important and one that bugged me a bit was the extra distance. Although the front runners ran exactly 42.2km, for traffic management reasons the course was slightly altered and the rest of the field ran an extra 500 meters or so. In the grand scale of things it doesn't seem like much but when you chasing a cut-off and with this race being a Two Oceans and Comrades qualifier that extra 500 meters makes a big difference.
The other issue was the lack a of decent goodie bag or any goodie bag for that matter. The event itself clearly made up for the goodie bag but its a tradition to have a goodie at big events. Hopefully with the marketing of the event being such a success the organisers will be able to pick a big corporate title sponsor that could help them with that.(HINT: FNB is moving into their new fancy building smack bang in the middle of town.)
From a personal point of view both Wesley and I did less actual running for this event than we did for past events. We focused more on strength training, trying to find a balance between cardio and resistance work. Even with my shift in training methods I still managed to run a personal best of 4:30:11, about 20 minutes faster than my previous PB (I am still super pleased). However, I felt that I could have pushed harder than what I did in the final 10k but my calves were starting to cramp up and I had to back off the pace.
I’m convinced that the supplement answer to cramping (magnesium and electrolytes) is BS. I emailed Nicholas Tam at Sports Science Institute of South Africa who told me that according to the research that they’ve done, cramping is due to a lack of fitness and conditioning. And supplements has no effect on preventing cramps.
So for the next marathon which will the be Cape Peninsula in February 2014 we will be training more specifically as endurance athletes and not generalists. We’ll let you know how that goes and what training methods we intend to implement.
See you at the races!
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