Stability Through Motion

Antwerp Marathon: 26.2 miles (42k)

3 hours 13 mins 2 seconds

I travelled through some zones of despair I hadn’t seen before on Sunday. It crept up to 21 degrees C with no shade for long stretches – quite nasty, though I know that’s not really hot.

First half was fine and dandy, keeping ahead of the 3:15 pacers and their bright blue balloons, and on course for my optimum time of 3:10. Forgot my handy pace band though so was a little bit lost for some of  the time, and too tempted to chase people – a very stupid mistake. Then after a long lonely seemingly endless section of dual carriageway I was started to slow.

All of sudden, at 26 or 27k I heard the pounding of a pack of runners on my tail, glanced round and it was the pacing group – minus balloons. What a horrible moment, I really thought they’d just pass me and that would be that. I could console myself that I’d still make it to the end with a PB, but I think I would have lost so much spirit if I had let them past that I gritted my teeth and stayed in front of them until 38k.

By that point, several of the pack had fallen by the wayside and we were passing runners all the time. The pacer was level with me shouting encouragement in Dutch. He translated one of his phrases to me as

“Everybody feels pain now, so we must make the pain pass quicker”

True but highly annoying words – and he then sped up for the last 3k – by this time my quads were in agony, something I’ve never had before. Our fastest kms were right at the end. Even after the Snowdonia marathon and the infamous descent to the end, my quads were fine.

Post-race I had the traditional relaxing limp around town for hours desperately looking for UNsweetened water, lunch, and general moseying around town. I still can’t remember a thing about Antwerp though, so I’ll have to return another day to do some sight-seeing.

Not sure quite what the reasons for my pain this time were – quite possibly I didn’t take enough water and fuel on board. I was reluctant to drink more because if I’d stopped for a pee, I just know I would never have caught the pacing group up again.

Next goals (there’s always another one) – a 10k race in Oxford in May – nice and short, but again trying to break my PB and dip under 40 minutes, which should be realistic, then an off-road and hilly marathon in Swaledale in mid-June.

Tags: marathon, race, race-report

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 4:26 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.