Munich Marathon

I guess not everything always goes to plan, or maybe sometimes the plan we set out isn’t actually achievable, so writing this less than 12 hours after completing the Munich Marathon I haven’t really decided how I feel looking back at it.

When I first signed up to do a marathon I think my goal was to do it in under 3 hour and 30 minutes, that would be consistent 5min/km which I thought was very doable. My most recent half marathon was faster than that pace so given I had registered in May and the run was in October I felt that 5 months was probably enough time to build up the distance knowing that raw pace probably wasn’t a problem.

Training had been going well, I had been gradually building up my long runs until they were about 30km and I’d been doing them at around 5:15/km pace just to keep it relatively easy, I had been building them by 2-3km per week and so by the start of August I was actually in good shape to be able to get to the 40km mark by the first or second week of September, giving me about 4 weeks to then just work on a bit of speed to add to it.

Then out of nowhere I developed a sort of hamstring pain, I’m not sure whether it was from running or from golf but whatever it was it hurt when I tried to stretch it and when I tried to run any sort of distance I’d end up with an aching pain. Off to the physiological I went who told me I had to lay off running all together, not stretch it and to work on my hamstring strength. I’m cool with that but wanted a second opinion, which I got, which was that I was extremely tight and to lay of the strengthening exercises and to focus on stretching. This was challenging because I really only had 2 months to get it sorted and I kind of had to pick a direction of how I thought it would get me better. I predominantly went with strengthening which lessened the pain a bit (maybe this was just rest) but didn’t seem to really be fixing the problem.

I started to add stretching to my program, but I was cautious because what if it made it worse, so never really went fully into it. Things progressively started to get better and I felt confident to run 5km but not at a fast pace, I pretty much did nothing in August and very little in September and my longest run was actually here in Munich where I did 9km the first day I arrived.

So what does that mean for the marathon? Well it meant I started the race in unchartered territory, I had never run the distance as a long run and I was unsure how my hamstring would hold up for any distance beyond about 10km, I also had no real concept of how fast I could go, it was all unchartered territory

I got to the event pretty early, the race didn’t start till 9am, I wasn’t sure about trains etc but ended dup getting to the bag drop off at around 7:40am. I really like the bag drop off, held inside a stadium it meant that there was plenty of space and toilets were the appropriate size for an olympic event, not just a bunch of port-a-loos.

I decided to sit inside till about 8:15am and then went out and did a few warm up drills and got the watch calibrated. As soon as I get home I will replace my Garmin swim watch as my running watch because it just doesn’t cut it. At around 8:45am we all went into the starting bay and waiting for the countdown, I was surprised at how many people wore full winter running gear and here I was in shorts and shirt.

We started and immediately the pace of those around me was probably faster than I expected, I was hoping for somewhere around the 5min/km mark but was mid 4’s, looking back this was probably a bad idea, but the good news was the body was holding up well so I decided to go at whatever was comfortable, I kind of held this pace for the first 10km. One thing about a course in a different country is the difference in scenery but also spectators are different, it was nice to see so many people out and being positive, cheering and playing music, it was a great vibe.

I enjoyed the next 10km because it was through some pretty interesting streets and parks but by now I was starting to feel it in my legs a bit, I had definitely gone out too hard and I hadn’t done enough long distance km’s to probably hold it. Mentally it also got tough, it started bucketing down which kind of just made it miserable. I went through the half way point averaging around 4:45/km which was actually fast, but by the 26km it all came down in a crashing heap, I started to get cramps in my hamstrings and struggled to run. I did a few stretches and tried to change my technique but nothing worked, I accepted that it was going to be a long slow haul back to the finish run/walking the rest of the way.

Now the easy thing to do would have been to pull the pin on the whole thing, but I didn’t come all this way to DNF, so in the rain, I continued to trudge along. The one thing about being on struggle street like this is that it gives you a bit of time to reflect. I reflected on how I had managed my injury and what I could have done differently, my pacing early on, why I was doing this, there was lots going through my head, unfortunately pretty negative. The good thing was plenty of people on the side or running past gave me some words of motivation, I didn’t really understand them but I’ll take the fact they were delivered with a smile on their face as being positive.

The last 8 kilometres were tough, by this stage I was able to do some shuffling but continued the walk, the disappointing thing was there were so many people and this was the best section of the run through the main tourist area of the town. I managed to find a way I could shuffle along without cramping up and so before I new it I only had a bit to go, we were back in the park and getting close to the finish line. I don’t think it was till I got to about the 3km to go mark that I actually felt like I was done, but with a few jogs here and there before I knew it I was running across the finish line, not the ideal race but still proud of myself for doing my first stand alone marathon and also proud of my mental space for being able to get through to the fish.

Would I do it again? Absolutely and definitely here, but now its time to stretch the legs back out and start working hard again to improve my time for the next marathon, I know I have plenty of improvement in me.