Jaarbeurs Utrecht Marathon 2008

The Marathon of Utrecht took place last Monday (second easter day). I finished with a time of 3:50:51, which is about eight minutes faster than last year. The overall conclusion is that it went extremely well the first 33 km, but then my legs blocked, and I had to go on with a severely reduced pace. Too bad, because a much faster time was in my grasp. But I did finish, and actually faster than last year, so I'm quite happy. Always good to leave some room for improvement :)

The weather predictions were quite bad. Easter has been extremely cold this year, with snow and temperatures near zero. And indeed, we've seen all the weather types the Netherlands has to offer: lots of cold wind, snow, but also often a hot sun. We alternated a bit between freezing and being cooked alive. Fortunately, my long summer clothes (1 long legging, two sweat shirts, and a wind jacket) protected me sufficiently from the rather harsh weather conditions.

The following graph shows progression along the route:



A lot of people clustered depending on expected end time. There was a group led by a person with green balloons with an expected end time of four hours and a purple group for 3:45. I started somewhere near the end. I originally intended for a four hour time, but the moment I started running I had the impression that I should be able to run faster. I overtook the group with the purple balloons after a kilometer or so. I had the impression that they were actually running not that fast, but I decided to stick with them.

Not much of interest happened during the run. Once I joined the group, I basically switched to auto pilot, running sometimes up front, and sometimes taking shelter in the middle of the group. I took some food and drinks every five kilometers and that pattern repeated itself for many kilometers.

Until I took some drinks after 33 kilometers. I sprinted ahead a bit to give myself some time to properly drink some water. But when I rejoined the group (or, actually the hand full of people that were left of it) my legs started to hurt and it slowly grew worse. I could keep up but I realized that I could only keep this pace for about two to three kilometers, but not eight kilometers. Angry with myself for failing so relatively close to the finish, I dropped off. Then matters grew worse, because it is much harder to push yourself once you are running alone. Fortunately, there were a lot of people shouting encouragements that kind of force you to keep on going.

I lot a lot of time the last several kilometers, but I did manage to reach the finish in a relatively good shape:


In fact, by not pushing myself to the limits near the end, it felt more like a hard training. I did not feel as depleted as last year, and I did not suffer as much afterwards :)