Runners Platform SA

Welcome, fellow runners and fitness enthusiasts. How far should my long run be?" is the question every Two Oceans runner asks eventually, and there's no clean answer. It depends on your experience, your current fitness, and how consistent your last few months of training have actually been - not how consistent you meant them to be. The Two Oceans course doesn't reward raw fitness so much as patience. Whether you're doing the 56 km Ultra or the 21.1 km Half, Cape Town's climbs and unpredictable weather punish anyone who hasn't spent real hours on their feet. Long runs are how you buy that experience. Why long runs matter Long runs make your heart more efficient and teach your muscles to use oxygen better. That part's fairly well understood. The mental side matters just as much, though it gets talked about less. Somewhere around hour three, you stop panicking about tired legs and just... keep moving. That's not a metaphor - it's a skill, and it...

  Are They Worth The Money? Welcome, fellow runners and fitness enthusiasts. Walk into any running shop and you'll see them stacked at the top of the wall: carbon-plated shoes, priced like it's personal, promising to shave minutes off your marathon. Some runners swear by them. Others think they're an expensive way to look serious about running. Honestly, both camps have a point. Since the Vaporfly showed up and marathon records started falling, every major brand built its own version - Adidas, ASICS, New Balance, Puma, Saucony, Hoka, Brooks, Mizuno, all of them. In South Africa that's R4,000 to R7,000 a pair. Not pocket change. So what are you actually paying for? What's in the shoe A thin carbon plate sits inside the midsole. It doesn't launch you forward like some kind of trampoline; that's the popular myth. What it does is stabilise the foam around it, so your stride transitions more smoothly from landing to toe-off. Studies have found runners often...