Cape Town - Three-time Comrades winner, Vladimir Kotov of Atlantic Beach, who is running this year’s marathon under Century City colours, is going for gold again this year. If he succeeds it will be his eighth gold medal.

The 51-year-old Belarus-born master returned to his home in Cape Town this weekend from an intensive nine week training period in the Czech Republic and Poland ahead of this weekend’s ultra-distance downhill race.

Training in the snow where temperatures ranged between two and 10 degrees Celsius, Vladimir ran an average of 1 100km a month on his training programme which also included Creo Therapy, or extreme cold temperature therapy, to reduce the threat of injury, aid recovery and optimise his physical health.

“Here over a period of 10 days you build up a tolerance to withstand extreme cold temperatures beginning at minus 120 degrees Celsius building up to minus 160 degrees Celsius.

“You are dressed in nothing but gloves, socks shoes, a mask and a cap and are only in minus 160 degrees Celsius for three minutes before moving into a second room of more moderate temperatures of around minus 60 degrees Celsius to enable your body to adjust to normal room temperature.”

Vladimir, who settled in South Africa in 2001, says training overseas also enables him to prepare himself mentally for the race.

“This way I can escape any pre-race hype. I do not use a computer during this period and miss any newspaper headlines and articles. It allows me just to concentrate on my training.”

This will be the 10th Comrades Vladimir will have run. He has won three times – in 2000, 2002 and 2004, came third on two occasions and in fourth position once.

The only two times of running the race that he did not come in the top 10 were due to injuries but in spite of this he still managed to come in 20th and 22nd - in under six hours.

Vladimir, who has embarked on a two day fast this week to cleanse his body before starting to carbo-load for the race, is a member of the recently formed Century City Athletics Club, which has been granted provisional affiliation to Western Province Athletics.

Club chairperson Richard Kohler said they are confident that they would meet the board’s requirements during the statutory probationary period enabling them to have their permanent affiliation ratified in the next six to twelve months.

The Century City Athletics Club, which has more than 50 inaugural members, holds weekly club runs on Tuesday evenings from the new Century City clubhouse in Central Park along a variety of routes within the safe confines of Century City.