[…] runevery weekend. We try to give a little extra rest before and after these efforts to ensure that your body will safely adapt to this more stressful form of training.

If you cannot perform a 5K race, you can either run a three-mile time trial or perform a three-mile cut-down workout where you run your first two miles at your lactate threshold speed and run the last mile as fast as you can without letting your form get sloppy. For those of you who have access to a track, an aerobic capacity workout of five repeats of 800 meters at slightly faster than your SK race pace with a slow 400-meter jog between each repeat would be a good substitute.

Aerobic Capacity (AC) Training

Description: high-intensity races or interval training; 5K racing or faster than 5K race pace “speed” training.

Purpose: to boost your VO,max—your ability to process greater amounts of oxygen. Has a callousing effect for marathoners.

Distance: 5K races or medium-length repeats (half-mile to mile). Duration: 2:30 to 6:00.

Pace: 5K races are run like races should be run—hard. Half-mile to mile (800 to 1600 meters) repeats should be performed at five seconds per mile faster than your most recent 5K race pace.

Intensity: fast, intense, and challenging; performed at roughly 95 to 100 percent of your maximum heart rate.

Recovery: medium-length repeats require half the distance jogged for recovery or about equal total time as the fast repeats last.

When running 5K races or performing aerobic capacity interval workouts, it is vital to warm up very thoroughly, with plenty of strides and stretching. These races and workouts require a lot of mental and physical intensity, so a proper cool-down with stretching is also extremely helpful.

Now that you have a better background on the general principles and specific types of training that I suggest for optimal marathon training, the exciting part is choosing and constructing the best possible training program for you. In the next issue of M&B, you will select your training level from four possible choices and set your realistic, high-probability marathon goal time based on this choice and certain other criteria. Don’t miss Part 3 of the series, as I will reveal for the first time ever, my coveted high-probability marathon goal-setting table so you can get started on a very manageable 22- week f training program geared toward a great fall marathon!

92 MH MARATHON & BEYOND March/April 2000

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My Most Unforgettable Ultramarathon

(And What | Learned From It)

BY PAUL REESE

PIETERMARITZBURG, SOUTH AF- oo? : ‘

RICA, May 31, 1989—When I became = aware of the Comrades Marathon in the late 1960s, the first thing I learned was that the race is not a standard marathon of 26 miles, 385 yards. The Comrades I ran in 1989 was 89.7 kilometers (just short of 56 miles). The distance, so I learned, varies from year to year, from around 54 miles to 56 miles, depending on road construction and the finish used for that year.

The second thing I learned about the Comrades is that while the start and finish points are always Durban and Pietermaritzburg, the direction of the race changes each year. On the uphill course, run oneven-numbered years, Durban is the start and Pietermaritzburg is the finish. On the downhill course, run on oddnumbered years, the start is Pietermaritzburg and the finish Durban.

As late as the early 1970s, few runners in the United States had heard of Comrades, let alone known the details of the race. I know about the race after my son, Mark, gave mea book called The Comrades Marathon Story,

94 @ MARATHON & BEYOND March/April 2000

first published in 1966. Mark had obtained the book directly from South Africa, which meant it contained information about the race not readily available in the United States.

As I read the year-by-year accounts by Morris Alexander, I began to feel there was a special lore about Comrades. I found myself wanting to be part of the Comrades experience: the race itself, its rich history, and its role as the Super Bowl of South Africa. The continuous, 11-hour live telecast makes the race the largest outdoor television production in South Africa.

The year I ran the race, Dr. Tim Noakes (author of Lore of Running) was a commentator on the television program. Noakes is professor of exercise and sports science at the University of Cape Town and Sports Science Institute of South Africa. He had finished Comrades seven times, three of them with a silver medal.

The history of the Comrades Marathon dates back to 1921, when Vic Clapham was, to quote Bullet Alexander, author of The Agony and the Ecstasy, “given the princely sum of R1 [one pound] for expenses to organize the event under the banner of the League of Comrades of the Great War,” hence the name Comrades Marathon. The original race had 34 starters and 16 finishers.

Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I became fascinated with the race, two roadblocks stood in the way of my running it. First, the conflict between my job and the race date of May 31 (that date held firm until 1995), atime when I could not be absent from my job. Second was the cost of the trip which, with kids in college, I could not afford.

A LITTLE HELP FROM A FRIEND

I might have backed away entirely from dreams of running Comrades had it not been for my friend Dr. Ralph Paffenbarger, alongside of whom I’ve run over 1,200 miles just in races. Over the years, Paff and I kept saying, ““We’ ve got to run Comrades some day.”

This thinking became more focused after Paff, a world-renowned epidemiologist, began making an annual pilgrimage to speak at the Cape Town University Medical School.

Eventually, by the mid-1980s, I was retired and free to travel and could afford to travel to South Africa, all my children now safely through college. With some nudging from Paff, all this crystallized in our laying plans to run the 1989 Comrades, the 64th annual. (The race was not run during the years of World War II: 1941-1945.) This being an odd-numbered year meant that we’d be running the downhill course, better suited to our vintages (Paff’s 67 and my 72) than the uphill grind.

Paul Reese MY MOST UNFORGETTABLE ULTRAMARATHON M 95

World-renowned epidemiologist— and racing buddy— Ralph Paffenbarger (right) with his Comrades-bound friend, Paul Reese.

In a field of more than 12,000(!), we were 2 of only 34 foreign entries. These were apartheid times in South Africa, so the country was banned from international competition, and countries banned their athletes from competing in South Africa. America’s The Athletics Congress (referred to then as TAC; today it is the USATF) outlawed the race, which meant that U.S. runners of national-class caliber would be blackballed if they ran the Comrades. Now light years removed from national-class ranking, Paff and I didn’t have to worry on that score. I considered TAC’s policy, which lumped the race into the politics of South Africa, as outrageous and unfair. The Comrades Marathon Association prides itself on advancing the cause of sportsmanship in South Africa. Blacks were first admitted to the race in 1975 and, to the race’s credit, they and all runners of all races compete on an absolutely equal basis. So here was a giant step forward in race relationships in South Africa (blacks and whites on equal footing), but the TAC’s reaction was not to applaud and encourage the race, but to ban it. As an individual, I could, in pursuit of liberty and happiness, applaud and promote the efforts of the organizers to encourage racial equality by entering the race.

From the outset, my battle plan for doing the race was predicated on finishing. Yield not to the temptation to try to excel in my age division. I’d done that in the 54-mile London-to-Brighton race at age 61 and wound up wobbling to an 8:12 finish.

Caution would be the key word to whatever training and preparation I did for the race. This extended all the way to planning my flight to South Africa. Rather than endure over 20 hours of flight time, plus a layover at an airport between flights, I decided to fly to London, stay over for 36 hours, then fly to South Africa. I remembered the miserable flight (and the resulting illness) that

COURTESY OF PAUL REESE

96 HM MARATHON & BEYOND March/April 2000

Jim Peters suffered from England to Helsinki in a drafty old ex-military plane in 1952 on his way to an Olympic Marathon he should have won. Peters and his airplane experiences served as an object lesson to me.

MILEAGE IN THE BANK

Leaving home for South Africa, I felt that I’d logged sufficient mileage during the three months preceding the race to get me through it, and my confidence was also bolstered by some races I had survived.

In the 112 days prior to leaving home on May 24, I had logged 1,138 miles for a daily average of 10.16 miles, load enough for my 72-year-old body. My long runs in February were 20, 16, 38, 22, 20, and 16 miles; in March, two marathons and a 50-mile race; in April two marathons, two SOK races, anda 50K training run. In May I slacked off with five 12-mile runs and six 10-mile runs. I picked up confidence for the 90K Comrades distance from having survived 60 ultra races, plus more than double that number of marathons.

Calling on my racing experience of 24 years (first race in 1965 at age 48), Imade all the logistical preparations I could think of to ease the race. Following my custom, I wore a lightweight racing flat. Knowing that my body would find the 6:00 A.M. start cold, I wore a long-sleeved polypropylene top and a tank top over it. Over my nylon shorts, I wore a pair of Sporthills. Aware that I would be shedding the Sporthills early in the race, and planning to make this whole enterprise as simple as possible, I had my wife cut the Sporthills from waist to toe, then sew Velcro on both sides of the slits. That done, we simply fastened the Velcro; when it came time in the race to shed, I could do it with one quick yank.

Another nicety of my planning was to carry a lightweight fanny pack—sort of an emergency survival kit. Inside I had a roll of Elastoplast tape (for muscle or tendon pulls), two pads of moleskin, small scissors, Vaseline, an eight-ounce water bottle, PowerBar, dried banana chips (which proved useless—they tasted like sawdust; after two bites, I dumped them), asthma inhalant, and toilet paper.

Thus it was that I arrived in Durban, South Africa, where the race finished, girded and well prepared for battle. That was on a Friday. On Saturday, to paraphrase Robert Burns, the best laid plans of man went astray. I was seized with a violent case of what the Aussies call “the squitters,” Marines call the “galloping gizmos,” and tourists call “Montezuma’s revenge.” That’s right— Thad diarrhea.

Immediately, I called upon my friend Kaopectate. But it was not effective because for the next four days, right to the very morning of the race, my running, with some urgency and vigor, was focused on the bathroom. All the time, I kept losing strength and, with each day, my anxiety about starting the race, let alone finishing, mounted.

Paul Reese MY MOST UNFORGETTABLE ULTRAMARATHON @ 97

By race day, I didn’t think I had a prayer of finishing. Had it been a race at home—no travel, no expenses involved—I would not have started. But this was South Africa, with much travel, much time, and much money spent—and it was probably my only chance to run Comrades. After all, I was 72. So start, I must. I had to see what would happen. I could hear Whittier’s words:

For all the sad words of tongue and pen

The saddest are these: it might have been.

As Paff and I, carrying duffel bags with our clothes, walked the mile from our hotel in Pietermaritzburg (also known as Maritzburg, being named after Pieter Retief and Gerrit Maritz), I was drooping with disappointment, thinking, Hell, I’ve got to give it a try and see what happens. If I don’t try, I’11 wonder the rest of my life what would have happened if I’d tried.

A CARNIVAL OF

Arriving at the start, Paff and I found the atmosphere pretty much as Tim Naokes describes in Lore of Running:

“The atmosphere is carnival. We are an eccentric family doing for one day what we like the best. And no matter how humble the results, for eleven hours we are loved and applauded for it. From dawn until the sun sets in Durban, we are the children of the road, to be succored, encouraged, praised, protected. Today there can be only one outcome, each runner a winner, each a hero.”

Before lining up for the 6:00 a.m. start, I had to make one last frantic dash to anearby vacant lot and some bushes. To stand waiting in a portable potty line would have resulted in disaster. I appreciated the solitude of the lot and the concealment that the bushes and morning darkness afforded. I worried how I’d handle this urgency in the bright daylight of the race with people all around me. It was an urgency not to be denied, one which I felt sure would descend on me during the race.

When Paff and I hurried to the starting line, we had no trouble lining up with the 8:30 to 9:00 pace group. The street was so crowded with runners that getting to a faster group would have been a struggle, though with open seeding we were free to do so.

As we stood waiting for the start, I found myself thinking, I really don’tneed this dose of diarrhea. After all, I’m bringing enough excess baggage to the starting line with my asthma, 36 radiation treatments for prostate cancer two years ago, and a bad back (a messed-up vertebrae, a condition called spondylolysis, for which I wear a sacroiliac belt when running).

During the 20 minutes Paff and I stood waiting for the start, I reflected on a number of things. For one, I dreaded being immobilized so long because I knew that once the start came my stiff body would rebel at a sudden move to

98 Hi MARATHON & BEYOND March/April 2000

action. I reviewed the many courtesies that the Comrades Marathon Association (viz., Mervyn Williams, chairman, and Linda Barron, administrative secretary) had extended: no entry fee; driving Paff and me over the course two days before the race; chauffeuring us to our hotel in Maritzburg the day before the race; low race numbers (#302 for me, #305 for Paff, worn front and back), and even a personal gift for each of us.

As good as they’ ve been to me, I told myself, I’ ve got to try my damnedest to finish. Thinking this brought to mind words Id read about the race:

“Never bail out. You owe it to yourself, your family, your club, and all the people who helped you to finish. Look around you. Others are in as bad a shape as you are. Don’t quit. Hang in there!”

THE THREAT OF CUTOFF TIMES

Another thing I thought of was the hurdles that all of us wannabe finishers faced in the race: the distance, the hills, an 11-hour cutoff time for finishing, and cutoff times at three places along the way: Drummond at 45K (five hours, 30 minutes), 20K to go in nine hours, and 7K to go in 10:30. The distance didn’t intimidate me; my worry was the cutoff times.

Aware of these cutoff times, wanting to be ever knowledgeable of where I was by time and distance, and knowing the course would be marked in kilometers, I made a pace chart gauged on an 11-hour finish, which called for a pace of 7:20 per kilometer (or 11:44 per mile). Since it was too cumbersome to list the time for each of the 90 kilometers, my chart showed the time for every third kilometer. On the back of this chart, I listed landmarks along the way and their elevations.

Benefitting from the experience of many marathons and ultras, I recalled getting a bit muddled along the way, so I laminated this two-sided sheet and carried it in my fanny pack. It was reassuring to reach into my pack at the start and confirm I’d remembered to pack the chart.

I couldn’t help, either, but notice the contrast between Paff and me: I was bundled up; he was in tank top and shorts. Par for the course!

We knew that the start would be signaled by a recording of the late Max Trimborn’s famous cockcrow and by Mark Cornell, mayor of Maritzburg, firing a pistol. But when the start time came, we were so far back we heard nothing over the yelling of the crowd. Only the shuffling of people ahead of us told us that the race had started. We were still shuffling, much starting and stopping, when we reached the starting line four or five minutes later. I found myself thinking that Comrades needs a cannon start like they have at the Honolulu Marathon.

Paul Reese MY MOST UNFORGETTABLE ULTRAMARATHON 99

Once underway along with 12,164 other starters (there were 13,573 entries), moving up Long Market Street, Paff and I were so concentrated on trying to find running space that I forgot all my other problems. There was much jostling, many a spoken “Sorry,” much stopping and starting, a sharp turn into West Street, a steep decline, followed by an uphill.

About then I discovered gold: the Comrades refreshment stations, the first of 55 along the course. At each station runners were offered Coca Cola, water, an electrolyte, biscuits (cookies), chocolate, and a water trough for splashing (hat, self, sponge). I had read that as many as 80 people work a single aid station. Ididn’t realize it at the time, but I was to set a PR for aid station stops: I stopped at every one of them, grabbed some goodies, and ran off with a Coke in hand. The aid stations became my lifeline to the finish. My focus now was on getting from one aid station to the next.

Although 11 years have passed since the race and now, at age 83, I am in the prime of my senility, I remember everything I recorded above distinctly. The rest of the race I can recall with reasonable accuracy only because, shortly after the race finished, I made some shorthand notes. What follows is a combination of those old notes and today’s commentary.

Preoccupied with finding running space and my footing in the dark, with not bumping into other runners, with monitoring my body signals, and visiting with Paff, I was a bit startled when I arrived at 10K unexpectedly soon. This was a good feeling that was offset almost immediately when I looked at my watch and saw I was running right at the 11-hour cutoff pace. No equity whatsoever. Realizing this was unfair to Paff who, solicitous of my welfare, had been running alongside me, I told him, “Take off. Don’t wait for me. I’m still not sure how [ll make out.”

“Get going,” I replied. “That’s an order, Private!”

By now I became aware that I was beginning to attract attention because of my vintage and my number. Vintage because there were few of us 70-plus fossils in the race. Respecting my age, runners passing me yelled encouragement: “Keep going!” “Hang in there.” “Good work.” “Great pace, keep it up.” “See you at the finish!” Never in over 24 years have I received more encouragement from fellow runners. I was getting a taste of what is often referred to as “the Comrades family of runners.”

Cowies Hill) (366 m)

Altitde in meters

Bib numbers are significant at Comrades. My number 302 inferred a long time association with the race. Bib numbers are not assigned on the basis of seeding but, rather, on the number of races finished, or on the basis of gold or silver medals won. The prestigious green numbers go to runners who have finished 10 Comrades or won three golds or five silvers. The first 10 men and 3 women finishers in the race get gold; all other finishers under 7:30 get silver; the remainder of the finishers get bronze.

I took stock and was surprised, while doing a body systems check, to find no signs of rebellion from any body component. By the same token, I was quite aware that I had to exert undue effort to keep on pace, slow as it was. What astonished me most was that neither bowels nor bladder demanded relief. For the first time I began to think that maybe I could finish this thing.

Seeing that, at 30K, I was 20 minutes ahead of the cutoff time hoisted my morale flag. By now [had shed my Sporthills and polypro top. When I yanked off the Sporthills, I tossed them to a child watching the race. He grabbed them triumphantly and ran off to show them to friends nearby. Icrumpled the polypro top into a ball and tossed it to a woman I was approaching. She looked at it, looked at me, then ran toward me yelling, “Thank you, Boss! Thank you!”

By now nobody has to tell me there’s a lot of uphill on this downhill course.

Thad a plus and a minus reaction to that. The plus was that it was nice to get some relief from the downhill pounding. The minus was that I was already weak, and the damned hills were draining me. Yet, oddly, I was picking up more equity.

“Oh beautiful world,” I was thinking as I arrived at Drummond 50 minutes ahead of the cutoff time. I was halfway through the race and was now giving myself a 50/50 chance of finishing. Astounded that I’d not peed or pooped in

Paul Reese MY MOST UNFORGETTABLE ULTRAMARATHON @ 101

45K, I stopped to urinate even though I didn’t feel the urge to go. While doing so, I saw I was surrounded by guys doing the same thing. At this point, the race could have been subtitled “Little Niagara.”

Iheard some guys yelling, “Make way for Wally!” Ilooked around and saw that 80-year-old Wally Hayward, a Comrades legend, had some escorts clearing the way for him. I had two immediate reactions: (1) this is the Comrades family in action paving the way for a hero to finish; (2) hey, I’ ve had to run 300 or more yards circling around club members (usually three or four abreast) when passing them whereas Wally didn’t. Besides, he started at the front, picking up four or five minutes over many of us. For the first time in the race, my competitive juices stirred. This guy is not going to beat me, I told myself. Then a voice from within reminded me, Back off. Don’t be so sensitive. Geez, after all, the guy is 80. You probably won’t even be alive at 80, let alone doing what he is.

As I took off, I found myself thinking that if I could just hold this pace until I got to Fields Hill, where the real downhill began, I had it made.

I became aware that the tone of the race had changed. The joviality and chatter of the early miles had disappeared. Most runners, like me, were grimly about the business of burrowing in, plowing their way to Durban. Around and about me were no effortless runners, no smooth striders. I was surrounded by plodders, and all of us seemed damned content to be moving forward. The battle to reach Kingsmead Stadium in Durban before 11 hours had begun in earnest. Some, I noticed, had already lost that battle: the number of Imperial Car rescue vans was increasing, each loaded with runners who had dropped out. By this point on the course, I was loaded with impressions from the race:

¢ All the runners who passed me yelled encouragement. The ones with green numbers especially entreated me to keep going.

I saw some Zulu dancers along the way. Young boys were picking up cups still half-filled with Coke.

Always within earshot was the sound of spectators shouting encouragement. I was surprised how many of them called me “dad.”

Near Botha’s Hill, the girls from Kearsney College cheered us on. They were enthusiastic but showed much more ladylike behavior than the Wellesley girls at Boston.

Many, if not the majority, of the Caucasian runners were built like lightheavyweight or heavyweight boxers instead of being lean like the black runners.

102. MM MARATHON & BEYOND March/April 2000

* “You’re never too old to look,” said Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes when in his 90s. To that I could add, “And never too tired,” because I noticed that 75 percent of the women runners were very attractive.

¢ Finally, a sight that tore at my heart, one I’ll never be able to erase from my mind, was the 50 or more kids, all in neat gray uniforms, all standing and lined up like sentinels, all polio victims with crutches and braces.

FIELD’S HILL AND 70K

Arriving at Kloof Station and the top of Field’s Hill, I could make out Durban 25K in the distance. Unbelievable, I told myself. Better believe in miracles because I’m gonna finish this baby. What’s more, I can even improve on my time by jazzing up the pace on this downhill, which is my forte.

Wrong! Major mistake! I had not gone more than 600 yards at an accelerated pace when a hamstring screamed out, “Like hell you will!” It brought me to a screeching halt, and I had to stop and massage out the pull—a pull about as big as a marble. As I walked along, many spectators pleaded, “Don’t quit! Keep going. Stay with it. You must finish!”

I had gone bananas, deserted my battle plan, abandoned caution by accel

erating, and now I was paying the price. Every time I started to run, the pull returned. As soon as I massaged out the lump, I’d take off jogging cautiously until another pull stopped me.

About the fourth time this happened, I made an estimate of time and distance and concluded I was running about an hour ahead of the 11-hour cutoff. If I could just keep moving forward, jog until the hamstring pull stopped me, rub it out as I walked, then resume jogging, I could beat the cutoff. My mortal fear was that the pull might worsen to a point where I could not rub it out and thereby immobilize me.

I welcomed the uphill in the Cowie’s Hill area, as it spelled relief for the

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Paul Reese

MY MOST UNFORGETTABLE ULTRAMARATHON

hamstring. Even though I’d lost about 20 minutes of my equity, I calculated that unless disaster struck I could still make the 11-hour cutoff.

As always happens after a free downhill, the flat seemed uphill. My overall impression of the course was that from beginning to end I was on a rollercoaster, either going down or up. I was told that the downhill course has 2,500 feet of elevation gain (as opposed to 5,000 for the “up” course). But in the shape I was in, I felt as if ’’d run up Mt. Whitney.

As I trudged toward the stadium, I became increasingly aware of how much spectators had helped to quell my storm along the way. Every so often in the last 10K one would run alongside of me shouting encouragement. One middleaged black woman, oversized and built more like a tight end than a mannequin, barefoot, tagged along with me for close to a kilometer. I marveled at how smoothly and effortlessly she moved considering her size and age. Had she been an entrant, I would have urged her to show the Comrades family tradition by grabbing me and pulling me to the finish!

THE FINISH

Going through the stadium gate, I was surprised to find the course making an arc under the stands before coming out onto the cricket green. It was a majestic sight, that green lawn with the race clock at the end and runners struggling toward the finish to the delight of 35,000 screaming spectators.

I saw several runners, semi-immobilized, reaching the finish only because they were supported or practically carried by fellow runners. Instead of quickening my pace, I jogged leisurely, savoring the scene, absorbing the moment, grateful unto God for the experience and the unexpected and much appreciated joy of finishing.

DAMNED MIRACLE!

Within three seconds of finishing, I was handed a bronze medal and a card with my time: 10:39:28. I finished 8,602 among the race’s 10,505 finishers and became the 88,208th finisher in the race’s 64-year history.

Later I learned, much to my surprise, that I was the first finisher over 70. That was bush league compared to the ecstasy of finishing which, when starting, I’d considered unachievable. Though enervated, I was electrified emotionally from the simple act of having exceeded expectations by finishing.

When I rendezvoused with Paff after the race, I learned that he had run into trouble around 65K. He had stopped at an aid station for a drink, and both his calves had suddenly cramped. As he bent down, he fell over backward. As he

104 mM MARATHON & BEYOND March/April 2000

Paul Reese’s 1989 Comrades finishing card.

fell to the pavement, his quick thinking to use his elbows to break his fall saved his head from colliding with the pavement. Momentarily, while lying there, he thought the race was over for him, but he managed to scramble up and start walking. Soon he eased into ajog, uncertain whether he’d make it to the finish. He wound up resurrecting himself and finishing in 10:24:34 for 7,490th place.

I learned that Wally Hayward had hung

SONGRATULATIONS N FINISHING THE

BAIE GELUK MET DIE VOLTOONNE VAN DIE

1989 COMRADES MARATHON

@& uber voLToooM

THE ABOVE TIME IS YOUR APPROXIMATE FINISHING TIME ONLY KEEP THIS CARD

BOGENOEMDE TYD IS ALLEENUIK JOU GERAAMDE KLAARMAAK TYD.

on guttily to finish in 10:58:03. At 80, he BEWAAR HIERDIE KAART was the oldest finisher. This six-time Com- INDIEN ENIGE NAVRAE rades winner was vomiting blood as he

crossed the finish line, where he collapsed. ae He was taken from there by stretcher and UNICLOX admitted to a hospital where he spent sev- sthad ie

eral days. cs a8 Ialso learned that Sam Tshabalala, a31year-old father of seven children, became the first black man to win the race in

POSTRACE

My Comrades experience extended to more than just the race itself. A couple of days after the race, I flew to Cape Town to visit one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Affectionately called “The Mother City,” Cape Town was founded in 1652. leven got an aerial view of it when, ever so bravely (since with advancing age I am increasingly fearful of heights), I rode the aerial cable car to the top of Table Mountain, which borders on Cape Town.

My travels also included a tour to Cape Hope, which has played a key role in the sea travels of mankind. Along the way, I saw some of the most extensive and beautiful ocean beaches I’ve ever seen. They make Waikiki look like a postage stamp. Leaving Cape Town to return to Johannesburg for the flight home, I indulged myself by riding on the world-famous Blue Train, which was sheer luxury.

Cape Town, Cape Horn, and the Blue Train, all frosting on the Comrades race cake—the best cake I’ ve ever tasted.

Paul Reese MY MOST UNFORGETTABLE ULTRAMARATHON 105

And What | Learned From It

London got me to asonably jood se ‘The At pack, pace chart, and ing th

omrades Marathon family tradition and saw a is alive and well. I confirmed that the race

rb more of t /O! | country. When you’ ‘Te go to : ; Bia go to a race, plan on stayi oo Py enjoy the setting afte ard. –

106 HM MARATHON & BEYOND March/April 2000