Just an update to say I ran my second marathon last weekend in Copenhagen!
I lost 8-10 weeks of training due to an awful case of shingles (which I'm still on two pain meds for now), then I started to transition to midfoot strike about a month ago so my feet were still tender/damaged in a few places from that. Plus, I picked up a cold the week before the race so I was still really snotty & tired even as far as Friday, but ended up feeling about 85% on race morning.
The short version of the rest of the race is that my hips and quads just weren't able to take the 3:45 target pace (5:18min per km). The former I blame on the frequency of cobbled stretches, the latter I blame on my recent midfoot striking building up my calves and hamstrings, but heelstriking during the race itself meant my quads were taking the brunt. When I realised that 3:45 wasn't going to happen, I just settled in, tried to smile at as many spectators as possible, and breathe deep and calm. The 20s felt harder than the 30s to me, but I think that's because I was still trying to maintain that pace then, and in the 30-kms I allowed myself to take a few walking breaks, though only of (honestly!) 10-20 second each. Just enough time to say "see hips? It hurts just as much when we're walking as when we're running. So let's run again!". Silly hips. They do lie, Shakira.
Unlike Amsterdam, I stayed perfectly lucid throughout - no fuzzy headed haze at 30km, and it really was just my mind against the gnawing pain of my hips, quads, and my poor battered, blistered feet. But like Amsterdam, I got to 40km, and thought "2km left? That's NOTHING! Let's go!" I picked up the pace considerably in the final stretch and managed (what felt like anyway) a sprint finish for a time of 3:52:37. Not the GFA I wanted, nor a PB, but considering I've only really had 6 weeks of training, I'm okay with that.
And there's
an official race photo of me mid-run here, too!
My parents got up at 3am to follow my race - my mom's iPad with the official app tracking my 5km splits, the Dailymile site watching my iPhone app update every 5min and my dad leaving me messages that got spoken into my ear, and the official site with the live video stream. It totally makes a long, foreign race feel friendlier to have messages from family and friends all over the world throughout the race!