The Sanlam Cape Town Marathon (42.2km) is a prestigious global city race open to a range of running enthusiasts from elite athletes to social runners. Along the iconic route, it takes in much of the Mother City’s beautiful mountain and sea sights. At the same time, it is a highly competitive marathon, with the flattish route making for fast times and dogged racing.
ASICS FrontRunner Admire Muzopambwa went with a goal in mind. His aim was to break the hallowed 02:30 mark. He did so in fine fashion, but it wasn’t all smooth sailing.
“I managed to taste that sub 2:30,” he said afterward of his 02:29:49, and 48th place overall (45th male). “Smiles all round for sure, but if it was a test, I can score myself about 75% - so there is still work to do,” he added.
According to Muzopambwa the last few weeks of his training and taper programme were pretty tough as he was heavily fatigued after the Magaliesberg Ultra Trail 50km. Because of this he was feeling a lot of pressure to go under 02:50 and it was mentally stressful in the build up. Then, on the day of the race, his coach sent him a final message saying: ‘Don’t go out too fast, just take it easy.’
“The only way I was going to be able to ‘take it easy’ but still run a fast pace was to hang with the lead woman, as I tried to do at the Frankfort Marathon, he said.
This worked really well for Muzopambwa as he managed to hang onto a very fast average speed, without having gone out too fast. “Those Ethopian and Kenyan women are so good. They really really gave me a lot of motivation and I gained a lot of respect for them,” he said, explaining how he had set his watch to a target time of 02:27.
“We ran the entire first half at a pace for 02:22 and all the while the woman who was pacing kept pushing the pace saying that we were going too slowly!” At 21km Muzopambwa had broken his own Half-Marathon PB (01:12:01) thanks to the pace.
“Then the leaders pushed on even more, saying that the hills were coming and we were going too slowly,” Muzopambwa said.
The pace seesawed between a target time of 02:24 - 02:27 here, then at around 32kms the leaders broke away, but Muzopambwa chose to stay on his target time. He managed to catch up to the fourth woman and she eventually ran on his heels most of the way to the finish.
“With around 6kms to go, I felt that I was on track and was going to break the 02:30 mark so I eased off just a bit and cruised in for 02:29:49.”
“I can really feel that sub 2:30 today though!”
