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!
Comments 2
Congrats. Great time.
Wow, das ist richtig schnell. Manchmal macht schnell und flach eben auch Spaß. Aber für so eine Zeit fehlt mir die Standfestigkeit und Ausdauer.
Irgendwie auch die Lust entsprechend zu trainieren.