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How to Choose and Run Your Comrades 2027 Qualifier

Welcome, fellow runners and fitness enthusiasts. Entering the Comrades Marathon is one thing. Qualifying for it is another. For thousands of runners preparing for the 2027 centenary race, the qualifier will be the first serious checkpoint of the journey. You need an official result. You need to achieve the required time. More importantly, you need to do it without wrecking the training block that follows. That last part is easily forgotten. A qualifier can become a race within the race. You start thinking about seeding, personal bests and what everyone else in the club is running. Before long, the marathon that was supposed to secure your place at Comrades becomes an all-out effort requiring several weeks of recovery. There is a better way to approach it. The qualifier needs a purpose. For some runners, that purpose is simply getting under five hours. Others want a faster result that may eventually help their starting position. Experienced runners might use the marathon as part of a la...
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Cape100

100km from Hermanus to Stellenbosch Welcome, fellow runners and fitness enthusiasts. There's a new race on the WPA calendar. Cape100, a point to point road ultra, Hermanus to Stellenbosch, 100km. The organisers say they're building "the world's premier 100km ultra marathon." I'd normally roll my eyes at that, and I sort of did, but the route is genuinely good and the distance is a real gap in the local calendar. Most Cape runners top out at the marathon, or they sign up for Comrades and spend six months training for a race that happens 1,600km away. A hundred on home roads is a different proposition. Whether it becomes a great race depends on things nobody can promise yet: the seeding, the cutoffs, whether the water tables hold up at 70km when the field is strung out and everybody is walking. That's where ultras are made or ruined. The scenery doesn't save you at 70km. And the scenery is good. Winelands, then farmland, then the sea somewhere ahead ...
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Race Day Checklist

 The Small Logistics That Can Ruin a Big Race Ask a runner about race prep and you'll hear about training blocks, interval sessions, tapering, carb loading. Fair enough, that stuff matters. But I've watched plenty of well trained athletes get undone by things that have nothing to do with fitness. A missed alarm. No safety pins in the bag. A toilet queue that isn't moving. A lace that snaps ten minutes before the gun. A fuel bottle sitting on the kitchen counter, exactly where you left it. None of that cares how many kilometres you logged in training. Race day has a way of blowing small mistakes out of proportion. Something you'd shrug off on a normal Tuesday run turns into a real problem when there are ten thousand nervous people trying to use the same three toilets on a tight schedule. So here's a checklist. Not to make you faster. Just to stop the avoidable stuff from becoming the story you tell about your race. The Night Before Starts the Race Most race da...
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Mastering the Walk-Run Strategy

Why Walking Isn't Cheating Welcome, fellow runners and fitness enthusiasts. There's an odd idea in running that just won't die, no matter how much the sport evolves: if you stop running and start walking, you've failed. You see it at every race. A runner slows to a walk and glances around, half hoping nobody noticed. Someone passes them, and they speed back up. A few minutes later, they're walking again. Why? Walking is one of the most useful tools a runner has. Done right, it manages fatigue, controls effort, saves energy, and keeps you moving longer. For beginners, it can make running possible in the first place. For experienced runners tackling long distances, it becomes a deliberate part of race strategy. The walk-run method does exactly what it sounds like: you alternate planned periods of running with planned periods of walking. Planned is the key word. There's a real difference between walking because you've completely run out of gas and walking...
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The Fastest 21 km Run in History

Welcome, fellow runners and fitness enthusiasts. Fast running exists on a spectrum, and then there's whatever Jacob Kiplimo did in Barcelona. The fastest half marathon ever recorded is 56:42, run by Uganda's Jacob Kiplimo on 16 February 2025. That's roughly 2:41 per kilometer, sustained for 21.1 km. Read that pace again. It's what a lot of recreational runners can barely hold for a single kilometer, let alone twenty-one of them. Kiplimo became the first person to break 57 minutes for the distance that day. His 15 km split, 40:07, was itself the fastest ever run at that checkpoint. World Athletics called it the biggest single jump in the men's half-marathon record. Then came the catch: the run wasn't eligible for ratification, because the course didn't fully meet record regulations. That catch matters more than it sounds like it should. Search "fastest half marathon ever" and you'll get two different answers depending on whether you mean th...
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Review: ASICS Novablast 6

A Few Months In Welcome, fellow runners and fitness enthusiasts.  I've put about 400 kilometres on the Novablast 6 now, mostly easy runs but with a fair few tempo sessions and one half marathon thrown in. Time to actually write down what I think, rather than just telling people "yeah they're good" at the club on Tuesday nights. First impressions The box says 245 grams for a UK men's size 9. Mine came in a touch heavier, closer to 250, but that's within the usual margin of error for these things. Straight out of the box they felt firmer than I expected. ASICS had been talking up the new FF Blast Max foam for months before release, and I'll admit I'd built up an image in my head of something almost trampoline-like. That's not quite what you get. The shape is unmistakably Novablast. That rocker geometry is still there, the sort of shoe that seems to want to roll you forward whether you're trying to or not. If you've worn the 4 or the 5, yo...
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Comrades 2027

  What We Know About the 28,000-Runner Centenary Race Welcome, fellow runners and fitness enthusiasts. The 2027 Comrades Marathon is taking shape, and there's a lot for runners to keep track of. It'll run on Sunday 13 June 2027, from Pietermaritzburg to Durban; the 100th edition of the race, and the 50th time it's gone in the Down direction. The field is also getting bigger: the entry cap is now 28,000 runners, the largest in the race's history. That number alone changes the feel of race weekend. More people in Pietermaritzburg beforehand, more supporters lining the route, and a much bigger job for organisers at the Durban finish. But if you're actually planning to run it, the questions that matter are simpler. How do you get in? What's the qualifying time? How long is the course really going to be? What does it cost? And what should you be doing right now, in August 2026, if you want to be on that start line? Here's what's confirmed so far. The da...
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