Brad Brown

Bailey Schneider and I were talking about the Garmin range of sports GPS units on the afternoon drive today. As part of the entry process for the Momentum 94.7 Cycle Challenge Highveld Stereo are giving away 20 Garmin Transitions packs, but only if you enter before 1 August 2010. You can enter by visiting the Cycle Challenge website. In that pack is the Garmin Edge 500 cycling GPS unit. I don’t train with that particular unit, I use the Garmin Forerunner 310XT which I absolutely love, but the functionality of the two units are very similar. If you love gadgets you will love training with a Garmin. Below are the details of the ride I did on Sunday afternoon. Take a few minutes and analyse the data to see what nifty little gadget it is: (by clicking on the view details button at the bottom)

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.
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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…

Berg en Dal 15km Night Race Route

The only downside of the route was Read more…

December has been one silly month! I am actually glad it is over to tell you the honest truth. I’ve been pretty slack updating you on the progress of my training but at least I haven’t been slack on the training. I seem to be recovering pretty well from my foot injury (although it has been playing up a bit the last couple of days again). I’ve managed to get a few 10km runs in the last two weeks which has been good preparation I think for the Read more…

It has been a pretty productive week as far as my training has gone. I am still battling with the tendonitis in my left foot but as the week has progressed my foot has improved. I’m still going for physio every day with Derrick Carter and he seems to be working some serious magic. I was able to run 4 times this week; Monday I did about Read more…

The weather this week played havoc with my raining plans. With two weeks to go to the Roy Brown memorial half marathon I really wanted to run the 15km night race last Wednesday in Benoni just to see how I would cope with a slightly longer distance. I was really nervous the first half of the week leading into it, but Wednesday morning arrived and the weather was shocking. I decided not to risk getting sick by running in the cold and wet conditions. That left me with a huge dilemma as Read more…

Brad Brown on the road

Another week down, October done and dusted and we’re in the home straight of 2009. This year has flown by. There are still a couple of important goals to acheive this year if Comrades 2010 is going to happen. First things first, I got my entry in today for the race. Phase 2 of entries for the 2010 race has begun. The 15000 entries of previous runners has been reached and now entries are open for 5000 novices. I watched the 2 big city marathons, Soweto and New York, on telly today. It was inspiring to see the masses of people taking part in both. The elite athletes are phenomenal but its the average guy or girl that have overcome some serious obsticals to get to the start line that fires me up.

My training this week and month went well. I’m keeping up with the novice 12 hour finnish program on the runnersworld website. I do have a bit of a niggly left ankle. I hurt it on a run on Tuesday and have been very worried about it since. I ran on Friday and Read more…