3hrs 30mins 11secs. Argh!!! I was hoping for 3hrs 20, but I think that, while I practised long runs, and fast runs, I never really practised long, fast runs, and this really started to get to my legs after mile 20 or so. Sooooo annoyed about the 11 seconds
I was really hoping to crack 3:30. Although my garmin made the distance to be 26.36 miles, so "technically" I'm still under
The course was OK, very flat in traditional Dutch style
, a few nice parks, and a decent river section. Nice, broad roads to run down for most of the track, , a few bottlenecks but mostly smooth going. The first 8k or so doubled back on itself in a loop, and I was intrigued how they would manage the section where the people just starting and the people on their 9th kilometer were on the same track, but it went smoothly.
It was extremely frustrating, doing a final burst of speed for the last 200 meters in the olympic stadium track, on almost-cramping legs, and seeing my timer click to 3:30 JUST before the finish line :eek: , but on balance it's mostly positive. It was a PB, and massively faster than the last marathon I ran, and I learned a lot. If I knew how my body would handle the speed and distance, I would have been slower in the first 18 miles, maybe tagged along the 3:30 marker team, then pushed forward as much as I could in the last part. But on the other hand, I stuck with the pace I had worked out was right, and I think I ran to the limit of my capability.
Steepler, how did you get on?
