Thousand Island Lake Marathon, and another PB

Last weekend  I joined a marathon on tarmac again. A simple 42.2km marathon on a normal street. No desert, no steep hills, rock-climbing sections or multi-day stage race. „Just“ a simple marathon.

It was a 21km track on the lakeside road at the thousand island lake in Zhejiang province, 320km away from home. 320km means, that’s a short distance and close to home here in China. 🙂

The area must be really beautiful on a clear sunny day but it started to rain on Saturday afternoon and it rained until race day morning. Luckily it stopped during the race

I came to this race without any expectations, I even never thought I would right a small report about his race here in my blog. It was a race as so many others. Well organized, friendly crowd, I was the only western foreigner. I still enjoy running these races, but it’s hard to find some words to write down as it is always the same.

It was just 2 weeks ago when I finished the 105k in Guizhou and Guizhou was the seventh race in seven weeks. After Guizhou I had just 2 short morning runs as kind of training, because body and mind needed a rest. Therefore my expectations was 3:30-3:45 for that race.

Anyway, I started as usual. As I should not. With full speed as it was a 10k race. Are you good in maths? I am, meanwhile. At least in calculating paces, speed and time I’m an expert. 🙂

After one hour I had already 13.9km on my watch. That means I would run a 1h:33m half marathon. That exactly happened. But!!.. there is always the other half coming. And that’s the ugly one, the painful. For example, in May I was running the Dalian marathon and also there I was running the first half to the turnaround in 1:33, but then the man with the hammer came at km26 and the second half I was crawling back in 2:05. If I would run a save solid marathon I would run the first half in 1:45 and the second half also.

But no risk, no fun. After the turnaround I could keep the pace. At km26 I knew I would run sub3:30, and at km32 I thought the first time that I can knock on my PB which I just got 2 weeks ago.

At km35 I felt my power gone. I had nearly no drinks during the race. At the aid stations I always grabbed some water and poured it over a sponge. So I only sucked some water from the sponge in my hand. If I drink during a race I have to slow down, otherwise I’m getting completely out of rhythm. During the hot summer months I throw the cups of water just in my face with an open mouth, so I get enough fuel, but this method is not recommend during a race at end of November where it has just 7degC.

Anyway, I calculated that I still can make it in 3:15-3:20. I pushed myself to the limit. That was some really hard, painful last 5km, but I arrived the lonely finish line on rank 45 out of 1636 after 3h:17m:42s; New PB again!