Distance: 41.48 km (is the reason TomTom or under-distance?) Duration: 3h:15m:48s Average pace: 04:43 min/km Average heart rate: 163 Max heart rate: 189
Today was the day – time for the marathon once again. When I woke up in the morning I felt darned tired despite the transition to the normal winter time (a small side note: I don’t understand why we still have to have the daylight savings time after all). I had got more sleep than usually – even 8 hours. The weather looked like reasonable, about +10 Degrees of Celsius and cloudy. Through the normal stuff to the starting grid: a hasty breakfast, checking out the hotel room and heading to the starting place. I didn’t feel like doing any special warmup as I figured out to do the first kilometres at a little slower pace.
When the start was given I wanted to get a position in the top group of the runners because in this event there are pretty few top runners and with a time of 3.20 one could be pretty high on the results’ list. My new GPS watch caused some extra tension, because I am still not entirely familiar with it. It also started to rain, but fortunately not very heavily. Mostly it was drizzling rain, but I got my shirt and glasses wet in any case.
The km pace until the first half of the marathon were about 4.26 – 4.45 min/km. Everything went pretty well until the 30 km, but then my legs felt stiffer and the overall feeling painful. It’s funny and sad at the same time how difficult it is to try to get the legs go quicker at that stage, but I simply couldn’t. More training needed…
I had an energy gel every six kilometres and otherwise resorted to the serving of the organisation (water, sports drink and cola). After having a gel I got a small boost so they are beneficial for a marathon runner without a doubt. I also nearly had a couple of cramps during the last 10 km, but fortunately there were salted cookies available at the drink station. I had a couple of those and they helped. During the final kilometres no more problems with the legs.
During the last few km I succeeded to bring the pace a bit better level, but any more to the desired zone. The time at the finish was 3.15.46 and I became second in the class M40. I had a bit of a bad feeling about not succeeding to reach below the target time of 3.15, but today this was my result. Now there’s time for the rest and to start thinking about the next year and the following races. The route in Braunschweig is not that easy than in Hamburg e.g. and today there was the additional impact from the weather – a bit of wet and muddy roads with wet leaves. Also the difference in the height of the route is bigger than in Hamburg, but I don’t think it had a decisive impact for the result nevertheless.