Three Days Out: The Training Is Done There is a specific kind of quiet that settles over a runner in the final days before Comrades. The alarm still goes off early out of habit. The legs feel oddly restless. You find yourself checking your race number again even though you checked it yesterday. This is normal. This is the taper talking. If you are reading this with race day less than 72 hours away, there is one thing worth saying before anything else: you have already done the hard part. The kilometres are banked. The body has adapted. Whatever fitness you were going to build from months of early alarms and long Sunday runs - it is sitting in your legs right now, waiting for Sunday morning. Nothing you do this week will add to it. A hard session today will not sharpen you. A long run on Friday will not fill a gap you imagine is there. What it will do is cost you, and the bill comes due somewhere between the 60km mark and Polly Shortts. The temptation to do more is real. Runn...
Three Days Out: The Training Is Done
There is a specific kind of quiet that settles over a runner in the final days before Comrades. The alarm still goes off early out of habit. The legs feel oddly restless. You find yourself checking your race number again even though you checked it yesterday.
This is normal. This is the taper talking.
If you are reading this with race day less than 72 hours away, there is one thing worth saying before anything else: you have already done the hard part. The kilometres are banked. The body has adapted. Whatever fitness you were going to build from months of early alarms and long Sunday runs - it is sitting in your legs right now, waiting for Sunday morning.
Nothing you do this week will add to it. A hard session today will not sharpen you. A long run on Friday will not fill a gap you imagine is there. What it will do is cost you, and the bill comes due somewhere between the 60km mark and Polly Shortts.
The temptation to do more is real. Runners who have spent months in motion find stillness uncomfortable. The urge to test yourself, to confirm the training worked, to feel ready rather than just trust that you are - that urge is strongest in taper week, and it has wrecked more Comrades preparations than most runners want to admit.
Keep the legs moving if short easy runs are part of your routine. But that is all. The goal for the next three days is simple: arrive at the start in Durban feeling fresh.
The race number is not the only thing worth checking
Race morning in Durban at 05:30 has a way of making everything feel urgent that previously seemed manageable. The transport that seemed sorted. The nutrition you planned to sort. The accommodation logistics you left a little loose.
Now is the time.
Check that your race number is attached and ready. Make sure you are running in shoes you have actually trained in - this is not the weekend to debut a fresh pair. Know your nutrition and hydration plan, and have your supplies ready rather than mentally noted. Confirm transport and accommodation if you are travelling to Durban from elsewhere. And have a pacing strategy that reflects the course, not just your hopes - the Up Run does not reward optimism at Cowie's Hill and ask questions later.
The calmer your morning, the better your race. Every small thing you sort this week is one less thing running through your head at 05h15 on Sunday.
The doubts are not telling you the truth
Almost every runner who stands on the start line at Durban City Hall has spent some portion of the final week wondering whether they have done enough. They replay the long runs. They count the weeks they trained well and the weeks they did not. They remember the session that went badly and discount the fifteen that went fine.
This is not useful information. It is just taper anxiety doing what taper anxiety does.
The honest truth is that the training that was going to make you ready has either happened or it has not, and nothing in the next three days changes that calculation. What you can control is how rested, hydrated, and mentally settled you are when the cockerel crows on Sunday morning. Focus there.
What you are about to be part of
There will be time after the race to reflect on everything it meant. Right now, with three days to go, it is worth pausing for a moment to consider what you have already earned.
You decided to try. You put in the work through winter mornings and tired legs and the low weeks when motivation was hard to find. You made the sacrifices, and in many cases your family made them alongside you. You qualified, you entered, and you showed up.
Many people talk about running Comrades. You actually did the training.
Whatever happens on Sunday - whether you are chasing a silver, hunting a Bill Rowan, or just determined to hear the final gun before the cutoff - you will be standing on a start line that Vic Clapham built over a century ago because he believed in what people could endure when they decided to try.
That matters before the race starts. It matters regardless of the medal you bring home.
Ska Fela Moya
The crowds will be out. Strangers will shout your name. Volunteers will hand you water with both hands and mean it. Somewhere past Drummond the hills will stop having names and just become part of the road you are still moving on.
Take it in.
Thank the people who give you something along the way.
Run your own race.
Sunday is almost here.
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