Pacing strategy for the Two Oceans Ultra
Supplied by: Andrew N Bosch, PhD, Associate Professor, Division of Exercise Science & Sports Medicine
Department of Human Biology, University of Cape Town, Sports Science Institute of South Africa
There is an old “rule of thumb” that says that for every minute gained by running too fast in the first half of a marathon, double that will be lost in the second half. There is a lot of truth in that. On a flat marathon course, the best way to run the time that you are capable of on the day is to run at a constant speed. At the elite level, we often see something a little different, which is that the second half is run faster than the first. This includes the Ultras, and it is well known how Bruce Fordyce often ran the Comrades marathon like this. Of course, the nature of the course in a race such as comrades plays a role, as it does in the case of the Two Oceans marathon.
The Two Oceans course is very flat for the first half, with the second half containing all the big hills; thus when you are at your most tired you have to deal with the most demanding part of the course. Thus the “even” pacing strategy discussed in the opening paragraph needs some modification for “Oceans”. Specifically, it’s a big ask to run the second half at the same pace as the first half. If you look at the split times, that is indeed exactly what the top handful of competitors do, but that could be considered exceptional. Rather, I have found that in Oceans a better time can be achieved by almost all runners if a little time is “put in the bank” over the first half of the race. We are not talking about a pace that is way too fast in the first half, but rather just a little faster per kilometer to allow a slowing down on the hills in the second half. Remember, a runner will never regain back on the downhill what has been lost on an uphill section of a race. Trying to do so will result in a pace that is far too fast and will guarantee that your legs will “die” soon afterwards. We see this every year amongst the front runners in Oceans. A runner will break away on the decent of “Chappies” and be leading by 30 seconds coming into Hout Bay. By Constantia Nek they are walking (yes, even the top runners suffer that fate; most times the other runners in the race just don’t get to see it) or running at the pace of a tired snail. So if you can’t make up time lost climbing by running much faster on the downs, then we are back to putting some time away on the flat first half to allow for time that is going to be lost on the hills.
The pacing strategy that has worked well for many runners that I have applied it to works in the following way. First, you must decide on a realistic finishing time for Oceans. This can be based on a recent standard marathon time. Take your marathon time and multiply it by 1.437. This will give you a very good approximation of your Oceans time. One can debate and argue whether this figure is 100% correct, but one is never going to be able to get it “spot on” as factors such as the course used for the marathon will affect it, weather conditions on both the day that the marathon was run as well as on Oceans day, how well trained you are for the Ultra distance compared to the marathon distance, etc. Thus if you have a 4hr marathon, you can expect to finish Oceans in approximately 5hrs 45 mins if you are appropriately trained. The next step is to proportion your running speed over the course. To do this, convert your Oceans goal time into minutes. In this example it will be 345 mins. Now, divide that by the race distance of 56 km. This will give your average speed for the race (6 min 10 sec/km). The next part is a bit tricky: You have to decide how much time you are going to allow yourself to slow down on the “significant” climbs (Chappies, Constantia Nek, etc.). There are roughly 12 km of these climbs. You should have a good idea from training runs of how much you slow down on long hills. If appropriately trained, on average you should not be more than 30 sec/k slower than the average pave we worked out, over the 12 km i.e. you can count on running, on average, 6 min 40 sec/km (6:10 + 30 sec). We will use this information shortly, but first we need to do the same for the downhill sections of the race. There are really only 5 km where you can count on “gaining back” some time. There are a few more than this in the race, but for the most part by then you will be too tired to make good use of them. For these 5km you can plan on running 15 seconds/km faster than your average. Thus in our example you can count on running at about 5:55/km (6:10 – 15 sec). We will come back to this figure shortly, too. We have now accounted for 17 km (12km + 5km) of the 56 km race. The total time for these 17 km is going to be the 12km at 6: 40 and the 5 km at 5:55, giving a total of 110 mins (1 hr 50 mins). The goal time in this example was 5 hr 45 mins. That leaves 3hrs 55 mins for the remaining distance of the race (39 km) (56 – 17 – 5). The pace for those kilometers, which includes the first 28 km, will be 235 mins (3 hrs 55 mins) divided by 39 km, giving a pace of 6 mim/k.
And there we have it. To have a very good chance of running the goal time of 5hr 45, the runner in this example will start at 6 min/k, run the uphills at 6:40, and the downs at 5:55.