Well, that's it folks. There have been ups and downs, but the end result was good. Fourteen marathons. Now I think I'll call it a day as far as running marathons is concerned. More on this later.
My Rotterdam marathon was going quite well up to 35 km. I was keeping close to my target time, having gained one minute "for safe keeping" for the later difficult stages. Only, I hadn't bargained with hitting the mythical 'Wall' big time. I had been hoping that this time I really was about to break the 3h30m barrier away from the island of Malta. I was keeping to the target times each kilometre, but past the 32 km mark or so the tiredness started to creep in. Incredibly, I was still keeping to my timings, in spite of this tiredness.
"Come on! You're so close to a memorable achievement", I thought.
They have a silly system for handing out drinks. Cups. What a nightmare. With bottles, the helpers hold out the bottle and you literally snatch it out of their hands without breaking your pace, and then proceed to drink from said bottle, again without any real slack in pace. No so with cups! If you try to take a cup while maintaining your pace the liquid will inevitably spill out. So you need to slow down to a walk. This creates havoc with the normal flow of the runners, with many a potential argument and lots of shoving and shouting as some of the runners have no intention of slowing down to pick up a drink. You then need to keep walking for a few more seconds while you gulp the contents of the cup, and proceed with your run while inevitably increasing the pace to make up for lost time.
After gulping down my drink at 35 km, I couldn't resume at my previous pace. I was too tired. I started to toy with the idea of slowing down to a walk. After some resistance the prospect became too attractive, and slow down to a walk is exactly what I did. I realised there and then that this spelt the end of my marathon career. It's become simply too hard for my liking. The disappointment was huge, and a new problem had now cropped up. There were 7 km left - which is not very much if you're running, but a completely harder task if you're walking on legs that are as stiff as tree trunks.
We had our names written just underneath the numbers that we wore on our chest. It's endearing to hear complete strangers shout out your name for encouragement. There were lots of spectators almost throughout the course providing fantastic support. The shouts of 'Come on Tonio!' became more frequent when I slowed to a walk, but all I could do was applaud back at them and signal that there was simply nothing I could do to make my legs run.
After an endless one and a half kilometres' walk, a particularly insistent group of spectators wouldn't give up until I tried to break into a jog. This provoked a huge applause from them. I alternated periods of walking and jogging, with the encouragement and applause routine being repeated several times.
Dear Dutch spectators of the Rotterdam marathon. You rock!
At long last I started the final kilometre. I had been having a final lapse into walking to prepare for the final effort and come in running at the finish. A man actually came out from the barriers and started jogging next to me inviting me to join him. When I resumed my jog he disappeared back behing the barriers. A few moments later, someone came from behind and planted himself right in front of me, making me break my step.
"Bhima!"
I resolved I would chase him and beat him to the finish. Incredibly, in my worst ever marathon, where I slowed down to a walk for several times, where 6 km to the finish my legs were so stiff I could barely walk, I actually finished at a sprint, leaving the bhima behind me and coming in at a not too disrespectable time (considering the periods spent walking) of about 3h45m.
As I said in the beginning, running marathons is taking too much out of me. I have been running marathons for all these years, because I wanted to. Now I'm quitting, because I don't really need to run marathons. Of course, this consideration existed even in the past, but the difference, now, is that I no longer want to burden myself with this huge effort, including many months of preparation.
It's been good. Now I can look forward to racing shorter distances again, which is not a bad idea at all.
