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.