Race Shape › Races

Training plans for South African races

A plan for each of these is generated from your own tested fitness, with the race date, distance and altitude already filled in. 18 races across running, cycling, swimming and triathlon — from a half marathon to Comrades, and from the Midmar Mile to the Cape Epic.

How long you need

The commonest mistake is starting too late and then trying to make it up, which is how a build turns into an injury. These are the block lengths the engine uses, from a reasonable base:

If you have less time than that, the plan still builds — it simply changes what it is for. Six weeks out from a marathon no meaningful aerobic fitness can be added, so the block becomes about arriving healthy and pacing sensibly, and it says so rather than pretending otherwise.

Why the race matters to the plan

Picking the race from this list fills in three things that change the training: the date, which sets the length of the block and where the taper falls; the distance, which decides how the long session is capped; and the altitude, which shifts your prescribed paces. Chasing a sea-level pace at 1 753 m in Johannesburg is the commonest way South African runners train too hard every single day, and the plan corrects for it automatically.

Races ranked A, B and C are handled differently. An A race gets a full taper and the block is built around it. A B race gets three easy days in front of it and nothing rearranged after. A C race gets no taper at all — you run it tired on purpose, because racing tired is a skill.

Running

Triathlon

Cycling

Swimming

Your race not here? You can enter it yourself, including a custom distance.