How to win Comrades: by lying perfectly still

Sunday. The plan is unambiguous: no gym, no running. A rest day. A day of strategic, disciplined, high-performance sitting around.

My body, however, did not get the memo. I woke up feeling good — legs fresh, that little itch in the calves that says come on, let’s go, just a quick one. Five days of running this week and the thing wants a sixth. Flattering, really. Also a trap.

Because here is the counterintuitive truth I’m learning: the run I don’t do today is doing more for me than one I could. All of this week’s kilometres — they don’t turn into fitness while I’m running them. They turn into fitness now, today, while I sit here heroically achieving nothing. The tendons quietly toughen. The engine quietly rebuilds. My job, my entire athletic contribution to this Sunday, is to stay out of the way and let it happen.

So let me be clear about what I’m doing today, in case it looks like ordinary loafing:

I am training.

That’s not a man avoiding exercise. That’s a serious endurance athlete executing a scientifically-backed recovery protocol at the highest level. The protocol is: sit down. Possibly a gentle walk later, if I’m feeling ambitious. Some stretching, in honour of that 74-year-old who’s more flexible than me. But mostly — rest.

This is, genuinely, how you win Comrades. Not on the big days. On the quiet ones, where the disciplined thing and the boring thing are the same thing, and you do it anyway. Anyone can run when they feel like running. The trick — the whole trick, over eleven months — is resting when you don’t feel like resting. Getting hurt is easy; it’s just enthusiasm with no brakes. Arriving at that start line in June whole and ready is the hard part, and it’s built out of Sundays exactly like this one.

So I’ll see you tomorrow, road. Today I’m busy doing the most important nothing of my week.