This Sunday, thousands of Australians will take part in the world’s largest timed-running race, the Sydney City2Surf. 76,254 runners took on the event last year, and race organizers are expecting even more this time around.  ZOO has a few handy tips for those foolish enough to take on the 14-kilometre mini-marathon.

Borrow training methods from the Tour De France. By that we mean cheat mercilessly and repeatedly. In the 1904 Tour, several riders were disqualified for traveling in cars, motorbikes and trains for parts of the race. And throughout the Tour’s history, cyclists have used vast amounts of booze, cocaine, amphetamines and rat poison all in the hope of getting some kind of competitive advantage.  Drugs and drinking began to fall out of fashion in the 1970s and 1980s when steroids, human-growth hormones and blood-doping came to the forefront. Are daily blood transfusions and testicle-shrinking chemicals a little too extreme for a 14 kilometre fun-run? Sure. If you want to be a loser.


Don’t get hammered the night before…. Get hammered during the race. Studies have shown that a lengthy drinking session reduce your strength, endurance, recovery capabilities and aerobic capacity the next day. But these same studies show that a small amount of alcohol can improve strength and endurance for about twenty minutes. So down half a litre of Bundy when you’re ten minutes away from Heartbreak Hill and let the sweet, sugary goodness propel you to victory.


"Sanka... You dead?" "Ya, mon." Cool Running Australia recommends that you train for months before attempting a marathon or half marathon, like the City2Surf. Unfortunately, the race is this weekend – you don’t have time for Cool Running’s intensive training regime. But you do have time to watch Cool Runnings, the delightful 1993 comedy about Jamaican bobsledding.


Try to be as Tanzanian as possible. Aussies have triumphed in the two most recent City2Surfs but before that, six out of the last seven male champions came from mighty United Republic of Tanzania.