Runners World South Africa

@ Chalky, my suggestion is take it easy this week and see how your foot handles, I was out for 3 weeks with a stress fracture. Good luck with your race sunday, sure all will go well for you.

@Chalky, my km’s dropped considerably in the two weeks leading into my first marathon. If I remember correctly I’ve only done about 70km’s over the two-week period of which about 18 was in the last week. The hard work was already done a while back so all you can do now is to rest and make sure that your foot is ok.

Good luck with your attempt and try to enjoy the day…

Chalky just remember if you hurt yourself further on the Hillcrest race then the two weeks to maritzburg is not a hell of a recovery period.. I know I am not one for setting good examples with my track record but it would probably be wiser to to take it easy and opt for the 21 at Hillcrest and then make a major attack on the maritzburg race, if the foot is not feeling great

@Chalky, my suggestion would be to rest this week COMPLETELY.
Stress fracture is not something that you should be taking lightly. It can put you out for weeks if you are not careful.
You have done all you need to do preparing for this race. Two weeks of no running and tapering is not a bad thing.
I think too many people worry that they have not done enough for a race and end up doing badly because they ended up training TOO MUCH!
My suggestion would be:
1) put your feet up and rest this week completely – maybe swimming if you want, or upper body gym – basically nothing that puts any stress on your legs.
2) run the Hillcrest slowly – at a pace that gets you in just under 05h00 – just to qualify. If at any time you feel pain and it is getting worse, you bail out at 21km.
3) If you bail out for Hillcrest, rest for one more week and run slowly (shuffle) for 5km at most, not more than 3 times during the week leading to PMB.
You want to run longterm and you want to run Comrades. So plan for the long term and there are still months to qualify.
Don’t rush it, don’t panic and remember REST is your best friend.
Good luck this weekend and keep us updated – every week!

hi Madelein

i saw my doc at medicross in Hillcrest, he said it must be a stress fracture and told me to get x rays done, he then said he could not see anything on the xray but said that you dont often see stress fractures on x ray. he told me to take a week of training.

so i just tool his word for it.
and 1 week to the day my foot feels 100%.

Madelein – indeed lets hope so.
Well today it feels great, this time last week i couldn’t walk on it.
lets hope it was just minor.

will give it a short test run tonight.

just tried it, no pain or discomfort at all.
just a bit of thigh burning ha ha ha

good sign!