Brad Brown

It’s hard to believe its exactly one year since I did my first road race. I ran the Berg en Dal 15km night in Krugersdorp last night. All I can say is what a difference a year can make. I had a great run. In comparison to 2010, chalk and cheese! Last year I did a 1:52, last night I took 28 minutes off that time and ran a 1:24. It’s not the easiest of races you’ll do. The first half has some challenging climbs but Read more…

I’ve been chatting to mates who are planning on running Comrades 2011 about their thoughts and training for the 2011 edition of the race. Everyone seems to be gearing up to get their training on properly come January. I went back to my training logs from last December to see what I was doing. What a difference a year can make. Last December I was battling the peroneal tendonitis and was running on and off. I went back and found a 10km run that I did in December 2009 to compare it to the 10km I ran on Monday. I was more than 10 minutes quicker on Monday (bear in mind that I also cycled 60kms before Mondays run and the route I ran was a bit tougher than the 2009 one). My splits are what really interested me. My fastest kilometre a year ago was 6:46. My slowest yon Monday was 6:51. My fastest was nearly a minute and a half faster than the one last year. (See the two workouts below on Garmin Connect) Read more…

I never mentioned it to anyone, except my wife, but the story just got a whole lot funnier so I thought I would share.

I just got back from the Kruger Park on the weekend after a 10 day holiday with the family. I managed to get a couple of runs in while I was there (in the camp of course – you couldn’t pay me enough to run in the park on my own). As always I used my Garmin 310XT on my training sessions to monitor my session. After what was supposed to be my second last run in the bush I hit the showers. We were camping so the ablutions were obviously communal.

The day we were scheduled to head home I wanted to go for one last run. I couldn’t find my 310 though. It was absolutely nowhere to be found. We literally packed everything up and didn’t come across it. I then retraced my steps to when I last used it and remembered the shower. I could clearly remember taking it off in the shower, putting it on the window ledge and thinking to myself “do not leave it there when you’re done”. I obviously had. I was sick to my stomach. I went back and it was gone. I asked the cleaners if they had seen it and they all said they hadn’t. I sent my son up to reception to see if anyone had handed it in. Once again to no avail. I was feeling more and more down. I love my 310 and I couldn’t imagine training without the damn thing.

As we were about to leave the camp site after packing everything up a gentleman arrived on a golf cart. In his hand was my 310. I nearly kissed him. Really. It actually crossed my mind because I was so happy. He was from housekeeping and said that one of his guys had found it in the shower and handed it in. I was so relieved having had it returned.

Its a great story of honesty and integrity triumphing over evil. It would have been so easy for whoever found it to try and sell it off and make a little bit of extra cash.

The saga continued today though when I dumped all the info onto Garmin Connect from my recent travels. I have been away on and off for the last month and haven’t had time to dump the data. I was looking at some of the training I had done on my travels. The run along the promenade in Cape Town with my best mate James. The workouts I did in Nelspruit and Witbank. Going through the data from my trip to Kruger I noticed a workout of over 3 hours. I found that strange as I am still nursing my itb and I only ran while I was in the Kruger. But I definitely didn’t run for more than 3 hours. So I opened up the workout for a closer look. Turns out who ever found it decided to try it out before they handed it in to housekeeping.

Below is the workout as I found it on Garmin Connect

I just got back from a 98km cycle and I am poked. We decided (Kevin and I) to do an easy 100km ride this morning. We headed out towards Maropeng at a decent pace and all was going just great. We were about to turn left off the R563 towards Maropeng when Kevin looked at me and asked “Are you feeling strong?”. Bare in mind at that stage we had done just over 30kms. I responded “ja, I’m feeling ok”. He then proceeded to ask me if I was keen on Hekpoort. I like visiting new places and had never been to Hekpoort so I said let’s do it. What the hell was I thinking???

Kevin did mention there was a steepish hill that we were going to go over but we would be fine. I got worried when we came around a corner and saw this view:

The view from the top of the Hekpoort pass

The road signs telling the trucks to engage a lower gear (like they do on Read more…

Another long one in the bag. It wasn’t pretty but I was reminded yesterday on twitter some days you’re the kicker and some days you’re the ass. A marathon is tough even if you have a great run. I’ve only done three but I learnt the most out of this weekends Wally Hayward marathon. I had a serious lesson in vasbyt.

The race was a two lapper and according to the nedbank 2010 race guide its one of the easiest marathons you can hope to run. I think they must have been talking about a different race to the one I ran on Saturday.

The blister that I picked up at the Loskop Marathon 2 weeks earlier had kept me off Read more…

My preparation for the 2010 Loskop Marathon was not ideal. A constantly niggly left foot after the Vaal Marathon 6 weeks earlier never allowed me to do the sort of mileage in the build up that I would have liked to have done. I also decided to change the shoes I was running literally one week before the race. This in hindsight probably wasn’t the wisest decision either. In the week prior to the race with the new shoes my tendonitis cleared up so I decided to risk running the 50kms in the new shoes.

We decided not to sleep over in either Middelburg or at the Loskop Dam the night before as I was on air until 7pm on the Friday evening. We woke up at 2am and were on the road to Middelburg by 2:30am. An early start to what was going to be a long day.

The Start of the 2010 Loskop Marathon

By the time we reached the start I was a bundle of nerves. As it started to get light the 4000 runners began the trek to the loskop dam. Earlier on in the week I had spoken to my good mate Dave Walters from MPower FM in Nelspruit and it turned out MPower FM was the media partner for the race. We were going to try and do a couple of live crossings from the road and the first one was as the gun went.

My goal was to go out until halfway at just under 7 minutes per kilometre until halfway and then take the rest of the race as it comes. It all went according to plan. About 5 km in I got swallowed up by Vlam’s sub 6 hour bus and decided to stick with them for as long as I could. I actually finished the Vaal Marathon in the bus and that’s how I qualified for Comrades 2010. That’s why it wasn’t vital that I finished under 6 hours in this one but the goal was to spend as much time as I could on the road to get a decent long one in the legs.
Read more…

I was so looking forward to the Spar Lantern 10km night race last night. It was rated as one of the best 10km races in the country last year. I wanted to take part as I had heard that it was well organised and the atmosphere was amazing with the entire route lit up by lanterns. After last nights race I have no idea why it was rated so highly.

I think why it was so bad last night was mostly because of Read more…

Another week closer to Comrades 2010! Only 18 more weeks to go. That is starting to scare the living daylights out of me. My training is going well, but I can’t help but feel I’m not doing enough. In the January edition of Runners World mention is made that I should be able to do Read more…

Berg en Dal 15km Night Race Route

The only downside of the route was Read more…

I’m starting to realise the power of social networking site like Twitter and Facebook. Its amazing how you can be in touch in real time with friends and family but also with people who traditionally were unreachable for the masses. I love the fact that I can use these sites to communicate with people who listen to my radio show and also people who are following what I am doing on the road in the lead up to Comrades 2010. I spent a bit of time this week end redesigning the background of my Twitter profile that is more inline with who I am and what I do. If you would like to follow me on Twitter you can find me at www.twitter.com/bradbrown947

Brad Brown on Twitter