Victoria Marathon turned out to be a tough one. Legs felt so-so from the beginning, my hip was tight and awkward. 38:12 at 10 km. Okay start, but it was more work than it should have been.
1:21 at halfway and I was feeling like the pace was nice, but I could tell my legs weren’t that fresh. Would they last? Of course not. At about 30 km, the legs starting fading and that was it. Passed my wife (who started with the Early Birds) at 31 km or so, and she yelled “you’re almost done”. Right. At moments such as these, I wonder why the heck I sign up for marathons. I mean, I enjoy about the first 30 km quite a bit, but then…. mmmm, well the words “struggling” and “crashing” comes to mind.
Oh well, the good thing is I have crashed many times before, so I’m familiar with experience. In the end, I managed to place 4th in my age category somehow, not sure how I pulled that one off…
Was there a lesson learned? Yep. First of all, I need to train better for marathons, duh. I knew that already. Secondly, I was not recovered well enough from Regina Marathon. I really should not run 2 marathons this close together again, unless I somehow find myself in “Lunty-shape” (which means running towards 200 km per week at times). I’m currently not the kind of runner who can do several marathons close together and run well in them. Probably never will be.
Promise to self – Must prepare better for 2010, where I plan to run 1 or 2 marathons with some faster times in mind.
I should mention I am also doing Las Vegas Marathon in December 2009. However, I have no ambitions in that race; I’m just going to see it as a training run. I’m going there for a holiday with my wife, and we’re just going to enjoy a few days there and do a long run while we are there. If I had run well in Victoria and also recovered well after it, I might have considered hoping for a good marathon time in Vegas. Since neither of those two scenarios actually occurred, focus will now be towards a good winter of training, and likely a start in Vancouver Marathon in May.
