I have mixed feelings about this, my 11th marathon, that I ran today.
It's already a fine achievement, considering that the last three weeks have been disrupted by illness. As I waited to start, in fact, I would happily settle for simply completing the run, thereby adding another marathon to my collection. But the way it turned out I'm just a bit disappointed that I missed beating the 3h30 barrier by just 20 seconds, and more so considering what happened in the very final kilometre.
I started off well, as per plan, running at just under 5 minutes per kilometre, i.e. potentially sub-3h30. The cough that has been tormenting me for the past weeks was nowhere in evidence, and the only irritation was a large group of runners following the 3h30 pace-setter, who were often getting in the way in bottlenecks and especially at drinking stations. They would come marching past me, and then I would run past them. This happened several times throughout the marathon until eventually they took a commanding lead and left me alone. Tonight I'll probably dream of large yellow balloons...
The kilometre markers were erratic, but on average it was clear that I was gaining ground on my target time. Like in Malta last March I tried to avoid competing with other runners and concentrated on my own pace, but it was almost impossible to ignore the yellow balloons. As I approached the half way mark I started to lose ground on the 5min/km pace, but regained the pace up the hill towards Quatre Bras and then towards Tervuren Park. It really looked, then, that I was on my way to another memorable finishing time, similar to what I achieved in Malta (3h26).
Alas! Coming out of Tervuren, at around the 30km mark, I ran out of steam. Nothing too dramatic: I just couldn't run as fast as I had been running before. I looked forward to the long descent following the 32nd kilometre hoping to regain lost ground, which I didn't, and then I realised that I wouldn't be able to hold the initial pace until the finish.
So I decided to change tactics. At the foot of the downhill, at 35k, I decided to ignore the watch and just concentrated on reaching the end. This was at the beginning of a 2km long hill, at Woluwe park, where we were joined by the runners of the half marathon, and here I realised that I was running much faster than all these people who had run 21km less than me! This realisation gave me a strong morale boost, and I ran up this hill quite strongly, although I had now to take care to ward off a new peril - cramps - which I managed to (just) keep at bay by avoiding sudden movements and accelerations.
Beyond the Montgomery roundabout, into Cinquantenaire Park, with just 3km to go, I only had one thing in mind - to get to the finish, slightly disappointed at the loss of pace. The final stretch was Rue de la Loi, where I go to work everyday, and eventually descending into the centre of Brussels to finish at the Grand Place. 40km. 41km. With 1.2km to go I decided to look at the watch to get an estimate of my completion time. To my great surprise the watch said 3h24m and 5 seconds. I had a fighting chance of breaking 3h30 after all!
So here I threw all caution to the wind. The cramp had disappeared, I was still feeling strong, and I ran as fast as I could for the final 1.2km. A few hundred metres later there was an incident involving an ambulance, a man with a travelling case and several runners getting jammed up at a bottleneck, blocking my way and disrupting my mad rush to the finish. One lady runner became very angry indeed as I had to practically push her in the back while coming to an abrupt stop... In the end it didn't make a difference as it turned out that, yet again, the 41km marker had been placed too early and I was to miss the target by 20 seconds, a good deal more than the 2 seconds' delay caused by the blockage.
When you miss a target by a few seconds you tend to try to find where you could have done better. Could I have kept a better rhythm by looking at the watch at each of the final few kilometres? Maybe. Probably not. What I do know is that I achieved a first today - finishing a marathon at a sprint! It goes to show there's still a lot of power left in the good old legs... Ah yes, and another first - two marathons in the same calendar year.
The statistics are not bad looking at all:
400th place out of 1647 starters and 1569 finishers
65th male Over 45
Pace exactly 5 minutes per kilometre
And now, on to the 12th marathon!
It's already a fine achievement, considering that the last three weeks have been disrupted by illness. As I waited to start, in fact, I would happily settle for simply completing the run, thereby adding another marathon to my collection. But the way it turned out I'm just a bit disappointed that I missed beating the 3h30 barrier by just 20 seconds, and more so considering what happened in the very final kilometre.
I started off well, as per plan, running at just under 5 minutes per kilometre, i.e. potentially sub-3h30. The cough that has been tormenting me for the past weeks was nowhere in evidence, and the only irritation was a large group of runners following the 3h30 pace-setter, who were often getting in the way in bottlenecks and especially at drinking stations. They would come marching past me, and then I would run past them. This happened several times throughout the marathon until eventually they took a commanding lead and left me alone. Tonight I'll probably dream of large yellow balloons...
The kilometre markers were erratic, but on average it was clear that I was gaining ground on my target time. Like in Malta last March I tried to avoid competing with other runners and concentrated on my own pace, but it was almost impossible to ignore the yellow balloons. As I approached the half way mark I started to lose ground on the 5min/km pace, but regained the pace up the hill towards Quatre Bras and then towards Tervuren Park. It really looked, then, that I was on my way to another memorable finishing time, similar to what I achieved in Malta (3h26).
Alas! Coming out of Tervuren, at around the 30km mark, I ran out of steam. Nothing too dramatic: I just couldn't run as fast as I had been running before. I looked forward to the long descent following the 32nd kilometre hoping to regain lost ground, which I didn't, and then I realised that I wouldn't be able to hold the initial pace until the finish.
So I decided to change tactics. At the foot of the downhill, at 35k, I decided to ignore the watch and just concentrated on reaching the end. This was at the beginning of a 2km long hill, at Woluwe park, where we were joined by the runners of the half marathon, and here I realised that I was running much faster than all these people who had run 21km less than me! This realisation gave me a strong morale boost, and I ran up this hill quite strongly, although I had now to take care to ward off a new peril - cramps - which I managed to (just) keep at bay by avoiding sudden movements and accelerations.
Beyond the Montgomery roundabout, into Cinquantenaire Park, with just 3km to go, I only had one thing in mind - to get to the finish, slightly disappointed at the loss of pace. The final stretch was Rue de la Loi, where I go to work everyday, and eventually descending into the centre of Brussels to finish at the Grand Place. 40km. 41km. With 1.2km to go I decided to look at the watch to get an estimate of my completion time. To my great surprise the watch said 3h24m and 5 seconds. I had a fighting chance of breaking 3h30 after all!
So here I threw all caution to the wind. The cramp had disappeared, I was still feeling strong, and I ran as fast as I could for the final 1.2km. A few hundred metres later there was an incident involving an ambulance, a man with a travelling case and several runners getting jammed up at a bottleneck, blocking my way and disrupting my mad rush to the finish. One lady runner became very angry indeed as I had to practically push her in the back while coming to an abrupt stop... In the end it didn't make a difference as it turned out that, yet again, the 41km marker had been placed too early and I was to miss the target by 20 seconds, a good deal more than the 2 seconds' delay caused by the blockage.
When you miss a target by a few seconds you tend to try to find where you could have done better. Could I have kept a better rhythm by looking at the watch at each of the final few kilometres? Maybe. Probably not. What I do know is that I achieved a first today - finishing a marathon at a sprint! It goes to show there's still a lot of power left in the good old legs... Ah yes, and another first - two marathons in the same calendar year.
The statistics are not bad looking at all:
400th place out of 1647 starters and 1569 finishers
65th male Over 45
Pace exactly 5 minutes per kilometre
And now, on to the 12th marathon!
P.S. After the finish, we had to limp on for a long, long walk (they said it's 800 metres, but it seemed much longer than that) to collect our bags from the Far Far Away Sports Hall. What a shame! It took me forever to get there. This, and the erratic kilometre markers marred an otherwise beautiful route. I'll probably look elsewhere for my future marathons.
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