Marathon – Mission accomplished

For the impatient who want only info – I did finish the marathon with time 4:15:55 and it was just unbelievably hard.

This was my first marathon to run in my life. I prepared and trained for this around 10 months and during this period I ran over 600km in training sessions. True, it wasn’t nearly as much as I wanted, but it still was better than nothing.

Pre-Race

We had to get up at 5.45 in the morning so that we could arrive to start place with enough time to prepare normally, start was at 9.00. I also needed to ‘fuel up’ with breakfast enough liquids (1 litre of energy drinks in my case) and give them enough time to absorb into body. We arrived at start area around 8.00 and weather was just gorgeous, with 14 degrees of Celsius in the morning. It took me around 30 minutes to give away personal belongings with warm-up dress, after that they gave to all runners plastic ´warm-up dress´ which we could ditch at start. Only problem I encountered was that there weren’t enough toilets. So from 8.30 to 8.50 I waited to relieve my natural desires. That left me with only 10 minutes to go to start, which was 1km away from where I was, and do some warm-up and stretching. I arrived at start corridor just some minutes before elite group started. All people were divided into 3 starting groups based on previous run times, because I didn’t have time I was in the last group with first-timers and people whose marathon time was more than 4:15.

Start and first 25 km

From start to 25km was quite uneventful. Our group started 9.15 and I went under start-line at around 9.20, so it took quite a while just to arrive there. During this distance my usual pace was around 5 min/km and I had to constantly slalom around slower people. It’s just incredible how many people there were running. They estimated around 40000 people in start and most of them were in front of me and slower than me, so I had to invent some creative methods to go past them. I guess that this constant speeding up and slowing down because of people caused me to spend quite a lot much needed energy. But it felt very good to pass hundreds and hundreds of people. During this distance I also realised to my surprise that 5 min/km was too fast for me and I was already getting little bit tired (I still my remembered half-marathon race where I ran at 4.10 min/km with no problems).

Until 25km my split times were:

5 km: 00:28:08
10 km: 00:54:50 / 0:26:42
15 km: 01:19:40 / 0:24:50
20 km: 01:44:58 / 0:25:18
25 km: 02:12:32 / 0:27:34

From 25k to 40k

Split times were:

30 km: 02:41:59 / 0:29:28
35 km: 03:14:46 / 0:32:47
40 km: 03:55:29 / 0:40:44

As seen from times they gradually increased, which meant that my tempo lowered. From around 35km until finish-line it was just incredibly hard to keep on moving. The only thing I wanted to do was to stop and lay down, even walking was painful. And I did stop few times just to stretch muscles, rest a tiny bit, gather whatever strength was left in me, think real hard whether to keep on going or quite, and then keep on moving again after finding answers to life, universe, everything and point of starting the race (point of staring is to finish, of course). Water and snack stops were real bless during last 15 km because energy was running real low, dehydration was huge because 3 hours of running and air temperature has risen to around 25-26 degrees, for most of the time there weren’t any shadows, so we ran under hot midday sun. Few times when I stopped I almost collapsed… These stops were ‘interesting’, because when I ran I felt that the only thing I wanted to do was to stop and rest, but I also knew that after I stop it would be even harder to start running again. During last 12 km I think I walked around 3km, and I’m not ashamed, it just was that hard.

From 40km to 42,195m

This 2195 meters took me 20 minutes. No, I wasn’t walking all the time. Just that right after 40km one poor fellow collapsed screaming and it turned out that both of his legs were in cramps, probably because he didn’t drink enough during the course and weather was also very hot, which caused dehydration. So I and one other German guy dragged him to sideways and stretched his shins. I’ve no idea how much time I spent there and honestly, I didn´t care too, at that time my finish time wasn´t important, I just wanted to finish and also that everyone who has gotten this far will also get to finish. Fortunately the other guy knew what he was doing, so after a while I saw that I couldn’t help anymore and I continued my painful trip to finish. I think it was 1.5km or so to finish when I started to run again and this time it was until the glorious finish.

Finish

Net time: 04:15:55

Honestly, I was just too tired to be even happy about it. It took about 10 minutes after finish when I got the medal, took some refreshments and found a place to sit down. I must admit that if there weren’t so many people around I’d probably cried, I really felt like it. It just seemed so unreal that I actually finished a marathon. It was physically most hard thing I’ve done to date, even to 40km+ trips with 15kg equipment done in army can´t compare to marathon. My personal belonging were some 1km away from finish and I had to make three 5 minute stops before I could walk there.

Afterwards everything went quite smoothly, I got my stuff, dressed, met with my extremely patient and lovely wife, who had to wait about 6 hours from my prestart to postfinish. Yea, it was even tough day for her. After I met her we went straight to our hostel. Trip from finish area to out hostel took way too much time. I think even 10 minute trip would’ve been long, but for us it took around 1.5 hours with 3 different U- and S-bahn trains and too much of walking. There I took a shower, rested a bit, had her to do me a massage, rested a bit, ate a bit, rested a bit more and then went to sleep.
Next day

It’s interesting that day wasn´t so bad as I had imagined. I guess this I can accredit to my training that I could restore relatively quickly. I don´t say I´m restored, but I thought that few days after marathon I won´t even be able to walk, but presto, I did walk, and even quite a lot.

One running book said that last 12km of marathon will provide a lot of soul searching, because of the tremendous effort you have to make to keep on moving. When I read that I believed it, but I didn’t imagine it to be so tough. I’ve ran some hard races that were hard because I was untrained, but marathon was just another level of effort. Unbelievably, mind-bogglingly, staggeringly, incredibly very-very hard.

But, here comes the illogical part, I will do it again!
I’ve been bitten by marathon bug and I’m sure this will not be my last marathon. I did test my limits, right now they’re 42km and 4:15:55, but I’m sure these are not my real limits. Little more training, little more preparing and I’m sure 3:30 is no problem for marathon.

This is scary

Most of you certainly have heard about scientology. And brainwashing. And what strange things religion can do to people. Well, here’s an example that really scares. I’ve no idea what’s the background of the guy who is filming, but he seems to know these 3 fanatics personally.

And no, there’s no hidden meaning behind this. Just look and make your own decisions.

Herring is a race horse!

One question out to all believers. What would it take for you to stop believing in Bible and/or God? I mean what evidence, what reasoning, what proof would be enough to leave religion? Could there be anything at all which can cause this?

This question, and of course many-many more,  is what I’ve been thinking about lately. I try to be as open-minded as I can and for me open-mindedness also means that when I see that I do something wrong, or that something what I believe is wrong, or even when I see that fundamental principles on which I’ve based my life are wrong – I change it, Christians call it repentance. This is also what you do when you ‘come’ to church – you change your lifestyle, if it may be called like that, and start to follow Jesus (whatever version of it church preaches).

Since last week, when the word got out that I have doubts and stopped attending church services, I’ve been asked many-many times from from different people where did those doubts came from, what is it exactly that you doubt about, when did they start etc. When I tell where they came from – mostly reading material from Internet, what atheists ex-Christians and people from other religions think about Christianity, Bible and religion at all – I’ve got many answers that said something in lines of: “Yeah, I know, I’ve been reading such material too, but it was too destructive for my faith and I started to doubt about this myself, so I just stopped reading it. So I don’t have to doubt anymore.”

So I keep away from absolutely anything that even might oppose my faith, that might make me doubt. And even when I find some things to which I don’t know answers, or sound contrary to Bible, I dismiss them right away. Why? Because Bible is right and even when I don’t understand it it must be right, because I believe it is right! Why I believe it is right? Because Bible itself says it is correct, infallible Word of God. Can you detect circular logic here? I believe it is right, because it says it is right and I believe it. There is no way any outside information can come in and change that view.

Anyway, for me where was this ‘gap’, where outside info could come in and right now I’m in this doubting state, which I must deal with. I know to believers this is absolutely incomprehensible that someone, who has been a believer himself for so long (like me), might doubt the existence of God and that Bible is infallible and living Word of God. I know it because I’ve been there, done that and got the T-shirt.

To skip little bit of ahead in time to answers that might say: “There’s absolutely nothing that might change my mind about Bible and its correctness”. I want ask this – isn’t this just a little bit closed minded approach?

Arthur Koestler once pointed out, “Faith is a wondrous thing; it is not only capable of moving mountains, but also of making you believe that a herring is a race horse.”

Soon, very soon

Only 14 more days to go to my first marathon. I think this time will go too fast. And now is already the time when there’s nothing I can add to my training. If last 6 months were not enough, then they are not enough, in 2 weeks I can do more harm than good.

Bad thing is that during last 7 days I couldn’t do any training, because on 2nd of Sept was half-marathon race and I’ve been quite tired after that. So I just tried to rest from that race for the first half of the week, but after that came out of the blue sore throat and headaches. There is no way I’m going to risk getting even more ill by running in such condition. I’d choose not to run for 2 more weeks and just walk the marathon than not to go there at all. Darnit, I’ve been waiting for this event since November of 2005! I think my emotional stress has had at least some part of this last period tiredness and ‘kind-of sickness’, you can read about the reasons what cause the stress from my previous posts about religion.

At least half-marathon race went well, my net time was 1:28:18, which is just what I targeted – to run under 1:30 or thereabouts. If I’d run 10K, I’m sure I’d made new PR, because inside that 21,1K I ran first 10K in record time. It feels so good to be in shape, I recommend it to everybody! Yes, for me to to get in this shape meant to run ~600km in 6 months, usually 3 times per week (which is not much, I want to run more, but unfortunately don’t have time for this), but it’s worth every second spent.