Last Sunday was one of the days were I realised how much I love running. Normally, I don't like to run on the roads, I prefer to run on trails in the woods or the mountains. On Sunday, nothing like this counted. I just ran.
I signed up for this marathon about two months before race day, thinking to have plenty of time to prepare. My plan was to run a new personal best time which should not be to hard since I have barely run a flat marathon on its own (without the 3.8k swim and the 180k bike ride of an Ironman). My coach prepared a detailed training plan telling me when to do intervals and long runs. But as it goes, other things were on my mind the last few weeks so I skipped quite a lot of training sessions. So two weeks before the race, we decided to just run it as a long slow training run. The instruction was to run slow and steady, a pace which I could hold for about 80k.
On race day, the weather was - let's say - unusual. It was cold, there was rain, hail and snow involved. I mean, it was in the end of April so... Anyway, the weather was how it was. Some of the pro athletes pulled out and the ones who tried to run the qualifying time for the Olympics had no chance in these conditions.
Before the start I was really cold and regretted that I did not put on some more clothes. Once we started running, it was okay though. I tried to run a swift but easy pace which was just under 5min/km. I felt relaxed. During the shower of hail the road got very slippery which slowed me down a bit. Anyway, I tried to run steady and once we were out on the long stretch to Meilen, I was picking up the pace. I just felt so unbelievably good that I had to run faster. All the time I thought that at some point, I would blow up because I did not do all the long runs you should do before a marathon. So I just waited for this moment.
In the meantime, I had passed the half marathon mark in 1:42 and was still feeling good. And I had fun! Now I was on the fast lane and I kept overtaking other runners. I was able to further pick up the pace and kilometer by kilometer I was coming closer to the finish. I waiting for the point where I would blow up. Km 30 passed, nothing. I was still happy. I was counting every kilometer down. Shortly after, my legs started to become a bit heavier, but I could keep up the pace. At the 37km mark I thought "shit, now it hurts" but I just kept pushing and running as fast as I possibly could. By now I had realised that I could stay well under 3:30 hours. So I just ran.
I crossed the finish line in 3:21:37 which is the fastest time I ever ran on this distance. I was super happy especially because I had never imagined I could do this on this very day. Looking back, my race strategy was probably just perfect for the shape I was in, running negative splits from the beginning to the end. Next time, I prepare properly! ;)
