Run Talk SA

Welcome to this edition of Run Talk SA, I’m David Katz, Mr Active. It is post Comrades, all the excitement of the 90th Comrades Marathon is done and dusted. Its recovery time now and we are going into winter, the three coldest months that we have here in South Africa. So the big thing and the first thing I want to hit our guest today with is post Comrades, what should people be doing? You’ve been doing so much mileage, so much training to get to the race, you’re thinking of doing it next year in 2016, what is the next step? Do you need a big, strong recovery, how much time do you need off?

With me today is Zac van Heerden from Exercise Solutions. Zac is an exercise scientist, he’s worked with the Portuguese football team, he’s worked with Bafana Bafana, he’s worked with Mamelodi Sundowns on their league championship winning season. He has plenty of experience and the main experience and Zac’s forte is sports science. Zac, just tell us, Comrades. Really, we know, it’s a heck load of training, a lot of time on your legs. A lot of people say, two months, some people say two weeks, what is the ideal recovery after Comrades? Read more

Welcome to this edition of Run Talk SA with myself David Katz, Mr Active and we are less than a week to go now until the Comrades Marathon and a lot of excitement in the air. I went out for a run in Johannesburg this morning, it’s starting to get finally a little bit cold. So a lot of the Comrades runners up here are going to be thankful that race week has arrived. There are plenty of runners around the country heading down to Comrades or up to Comrades this weekend, including none other than the legendary Barry Holland. Barry Holland has done no fewer than 42 Comrades, he’s done them consecutively and this year he’s going for 43. Barry, that is some sort of feat. talkfeed.co.za

Welcome to this week’s edition of Run Talk SA, I’m David Katz, Mr Active, taking over the podcast from Brad Brown. Many thanks to Brad, he’s done fantastic work on Run Talk SA over the last two years, but we will continue to mould this into a fantastic running podcast. All your questions you can get them into us, all your advice, anything you want people to know or you want to know. You’re welcome to send through to us on Run Talk SA.

This week we’re just over a week away from Comrades Marathon, the 2015 edition, of course it is an Up run. We talked about this last week with Brad, I did attempt the Comrades up run two years ago. Wasn’t in great form on race day and made it 71km feeling horrible for the last 20km. Great experience, unfortunately didn’t finish. I will be back, but someone who will be back this year and someone I’ve done a lot of running with since I re-immigrated to Jo’burg, moved away when I was about 3 years old, came back here in 2006. I’ve done a lot of running since 2006 with just a couple of men, one of them, Matthew van Wyngaardt, wasn’t running very far at that stage but he’s about to attempt his fifth Comrades in a row.

After two years and some amazing content, Brad Brown hands over the reigns of the Run Talk SA podcast to David "Mr. Active" Katz. Here is the introduction.

One of the biggest stories we have covered here on Run Talk SA was that of the Comrades Marathon cheats. If you missed the story or would like a refresher then make sure you check out this post where Mark Dowdeswell told us about his statistical findings.

We then had a look at the numbers from the following year's Comrades Marathon and made another startling discovery thanks to the help of another runners, Cuan Walker.

On this edition of Run Talk SA Brad Brown caught up with Comrades Marathon race director Rowyn James to find out what action has been taken against these cheats. You will be pleased to know that action has been taken and you can find out more about it on this episode of Run Talk SA.

Also be sure to look out for the next episode of Run Talk SA for an exciting announcement.

What does it take to run a marathon in under 3 hours? For many of us just finishing a marathon is an incredible achievement, running a sub 3 hour marathon is a super human achievement.

South African TV and sporting personality Arnold Geerdts has run 63 sub 3 hour marathons. That is not a typo. Sixty three sub three hour marathons, stretching over 4 decades.

Less than 40 people have run sub 3 hour marathons in 5 decades and Arnie is on a mission to become the first South African to achieve that incredible feat. That means running a marathon in under 3 hours in the 1970’s, 1980’s, 1990’s, 2000’s and 2010’s.

He came perilously close to doing it at the Boston Marathon this year as well as the Cape Town Marathon. He is however training for another onslaught early in 2015. Read more

9 Time winner of the Comrades Marathon Bruce Fordyce describes Bob de la Motte as follows:

“Bob de la Motte truly believed he would win the Comrades Marathon. While other contenders hoped to win, Bob knew he would. When he didn’t, he came back the following year twice as determined. In 1986 he broke the Comrades Marathon record and still did not win. He was the most ferociously determined athlete I ever met”

This week on Run Talk SA we catch up with Bob de la Motte, who is in South Africa to promote his new book “The Run Away Comrade”.

Bob shares with Brad a few of his wonderful memories of racing the Comrades Marathon in the Bruce Fordyce era. He also speaks about some of the legends of the South African road running scene including the like of Hosea Tjale, Josiah Thugwane and Johnny Halberstadt to name just a few.

Bob also spoke about Mark Plaaitjies as well as their decision to leave, what was then an awful South Africa. Read More

On this episode of Run Talk SA we welcome back Samantha Gash. Samantha, along with Mimi Anderson, have just completed a run of more than 2000km in just 32 days!

The first time we caught up with Samantha was a few days before she left Australia to head to South Africa to take on the Freedom Run (You can listen to that interview here). We caught up with her again this morning to find out how it went.

If you want to find out more about the Freedom Run, the route Samantha and Mimi ran as well as throwing a few bucks their way, please take a look at their website. Read more

This week on Run Talk SA we catch up with Manfred Seidler, one of the top athletics journalists in South Africa about a new initiative that he has started called Athletics Today.Athletics Today is a bi-weekly online video magazine programme that will keep you up to date with the latest news in the world of South African athletics as well as what is happening from an international perspective.On the podcast this week Brad catches up with Manfred to find out how it all started. They also chat about this past weekend’s Berlin Marathon and the state of Athletics in South Africa right now.Read More Read more

When someone tells you they are running planning on running 80km a day for 32 days, what is the first thing that pops into your mind?The first thing that pops into our mind is “That’s awesome, we’d love to do that too”. If you think the same way, you are going to love our chat with Samantha Gash this week on Run Talk SA.Samantha, along with Mimi Anderson are taking on the more than 2000km Freedom Trail between Pitermaritzburg and Paarl.These two incredible women aren’t just running the Freedom Trail because it is there, they are running it for a fantastic cause. They are running it to keep South African girls in school. We think this is an incredible story and we are super excited to share their story with you.As discussed in the podcast you can follow Samantha and Mimi’s journey across the Freedom Trail here, you can donate to the worthy cause here and send some Twitter love to Samantha here.Also as mentioned on this week’s podcast, join us for  Comrades Marathon webinar. Click here to register.READ MORE Read more