One of my friends told this to me. “All you need to do to finish is to do 18 parkruns at 40 minutes per parkrun or slightly faster”. I did the calculation and it works. The race is run “down” or “up” which normally indicates the direction of the race which is point to point. So a down run is from Pietermaritzburg to Durban, South Africa.Do noit let the “down” deceive you – there are many “uphills” in this run. The Down is normally a bit longer, but almost always a maximum of 90 kilometers. So 18 x 5km (a parkrun is a standard five km run) is 90 km. For the “up”run, the road may be a kilometer or two shorter. For simplicity the parkrunner will stick with 5 km segments as that is what he knows.

So in May 2016 I set out to test this theory. It worked exceptionally well (almost a bit too close) as my finishing time was 11 hours 59 minutes and 16 seconds. So this is what your pacing chart will look like.

Pacing chart:

Duration – speed per parkrun segment (5km)

12 hours –  40 minutes per segment

9 hours –  30 minutes per segment

6 hours –  20 minutes per segment

Every five minutes faster or slower adds or subtracts 90 minutes from your projected time.

To fine tune this – for every minute faster or slower, you will subtract or add 18 minutes to your time.

so for a 8 hours 42 minutes you would want to run at 29 minutes per segment.

The top athletes will have to fine tune this a bit more as your last segment (no 18 ) is less than 5 km. By that time you are tired and the back runners will welcome the shorter last bit. My last 4 km in the 2016 race was just over 30 minutes. The back runners must also take into consideration that they may need about ten minutes to cross the starting line. So you need to make up that time gradually. You do not need to pick up all the time as the last segment is shorter and you will gain a fee minutes here.

The discipline of slowing down by walking

This is the challenge for most runners. So I started with a four – three strategy which could go to a four – one strategy later.

Let me explain – this means four minutes of walking and then three minutes of running or later four minutes of walking and one minute of running. I tested this on a treadmill to simulate the walk and the run. It worked out to 7 minutes 39 seconds per kilometer at the faster rate and just over 9 minutes per kilometer with one minute of running. I then tested this pacing on a hilly area in Bellville and it validated the a pace of 8 minutes per kilometer.

So when the race started I used ten minutes to cross the finish line, but I kept to the discipline of walking. My theory was that I should walk when my body was still fresh to walk stronger. When you walk the first time because you are too tired, then you are too late. Of course the four-three did not always work perfectly. Some hills I walked more than four minutes and on some down hills I ran more than three minutes at a time.

My preparation:

My average weekly mileage was just below 55 km per week in the eight weeks leading up to the race (including tapering weeks). My qualifier was Two Oceans Marathon (56 km). My longest run in the period since November last year apart from the Oceans was 36 km. I would normally do one run of about 25 kilometer once a month (PowerRun) and then I did lots of parkruns and six parkruns on one day (30 kilometer total) which I believe is better than all the long runs average athletes do.

I also did pushups, planks, squats and lunges. I will increase this for next time. I also do the Tabata protocol which is a fast four minute run on a treadmill with 20 seconds running and 10 seconds resting .

My conclusion: 

A parkrunner with good pacing and good nutrition will perform better than his over trained friends running al those unnecessary long ones.