The last rehearsal for the marathon went pretty well, though it was not much fun. The night before the 3pm start of the jogging in Dilbeek, I was still on a beach in northern Denmark drinking red wine with colleagues around a bonfire. Had to get up indecently early to make it in time to the airport. Slept on the plane and was home by 11:andabit thanks to Chui Hsia and Sanna who came to pick me up.
It was raining. In fact, in Dilbeek it was pouring so hard that the sheet with my number (what's the english term for that? chest number?) ripped from the safety pins less than a minute after the start. The rain never stopped and I felt increasingly sorry for the officials, volunteers who stand around for hours just pointing the runners in the right direction. The circuit - three rounds of 7 kilometers - included some nasty climbing and several kilometers of mud paths.
But I finished, and I finished well. In the first round, several runners overtook me at a speed marginally higher than mine. Three or four of them I kept in sight, only to find in the second round that I was approaching then, overtaking them in turn. Pretty soon, I was at the head of a group of five or six who were trying to keep up with me. Strange, I never ran in such a position before.
I completed the race in three rounds of 37 minutes each: very consistent. My final time, of 1:51 at some seconds, meant I ran at a pace of 5 minutes 19 seconds per kilometer. I'm real pleased with that. It means that in Amsterdam I should consider joining the pacemakers that aim for finishing in four hours flat, and trying to stick with them at least until kilometer 30.
That's less than two weeks away...
No comments:
Post a Comment