Prague Marathon May 10
This was my second really competitive full marathon (Rome was just fun) and I enjoyed it quite a lot. I didn't quite make my target time (3h10) but I knocked 4 minutes (2%) off my Lausanne time to get a net time of 3h15m15 and I think I can see how I'll knock another 5 and a bit off next time to get down below 3h10.
I had a couple of problems. The first was that my garmin forerunner decided to crash hard and so I had little or no idea of the time. I used my cellphone as a watch but I was a minute or so wrong at the start so it only gave me rather rough times. It also didn't display the seconds so times were always to the nearest minute. I suspect I would have been a good deal more consistent if I'd had the watch to track my actual speed. It didn't help that the 3h15 pace balloon ended up running a bit slow. I was always ahead of him by a couple of minutes or so which I figued was a decent buffer to put me at about 3:12 or so. Unfortunately I was wrong.
The second problem was that I ran out of energy after about 30km. They gave us an energy sachet then and if I'd known there wasn't another one on offer at 35km I'd have taken two because the sachet really helped while it lasted. I was more or less right on target all the way upto 30km as the table below shows but I dropped 5 or 6 minutes in the last 12 km. because the pace dropped from 4.30/km to nearly 5min/km. I expect to drop a bit but that was more of a drop than anticipated.
Next time I will run slightly faster in the first half (1h32 instead of 1h34) and I'll keep a couple of ghu packs of my own to swallow later on in the race if none are provided.
SplitTimemin/KmDeltamin/KmRealTime10 Km0:44:544,290:44:544,290:44:2711,8 Km0:53:164,300:08:224,380:52:4920 Km1:29:484,290:36:324,271:29:2121,0971:34:524,290:05:044,371:34:2530 Km2:15:474,310:40:554,352:15:2040 Km3:04:504,370:49:034,543:04:23Arrivo3.15.424,380.10.524,573.15.15
Overall though I'm quite satisfied with the result and the race. The course was pretty flat and quite interesting as one got to see slower/faster runners quite a few places in the run from about 15km to 30 km. I wouldn't class the last 12km as "fun" but it was quite enjoyable before that and everything was very well organized.
Beyond the marathon, as a weekend though this was definitely a good vacation. Prague is a great city and the people are reasonably helpful and friendly. In fact we met a nice Czech guy at the airport and later on a guy from Costa Rica. On the Sunday evening we all hooked up and went on a food and beer crawl through Prague old town which was fun. We ended up in a Chilean bar in the Jewish "quarter" which was pretty cool.
I had a couple of problems. The first was that my garmin forerunner decided to crash hard and so I had little or no idea of the time. I used my cellphone as a watch but I was a minute or so wrong at the start so it only gave me rather rough times. It also didn't display the seconds so times were always to the nearest minute. I suspect I would have been a good deal more consistent if I'd had the watch to track my actual speed. It didn't help that the 3h15 pace balloon ended up running a bit slow. I was always ahead of him by a couple of minutes or so which I figued was a decent buffer to put me at about 3:12 or so. Unfortunately I was wrong.
The second problem was that I ran out of energy after about 30km. They gave us an energy sachet then and if I'd known there wasn't another one on offer at 35km I'd have taken two because the sachet really helped while it lasted. I was more or less right on target all the way upto 30km as the table below shows but I dropped 5 or 6 minutes in the last 12 km. because the pace dropped from 4.30/km to nearly 5min/km. I expect to drop a bit but that was more of a drop than anticipated.
Next time I will run slightly faster in the first half (1h32 instead of 1h34) and I'll keep a couple of ghu packs of my own to swallow later on in the race if none are provided.
SplitTimemin/KmDeltamin/KmRealTime10 Km0:44:544,290:44:544,290:44:2711,8 Km0:53:164,300:08:224,380:52:4920 Km1:29:484,290:36:324,271:29:2121,0971:34:524,290:05:044,371:34:2530 Km2:15:474,310:40:554,352:15:2040 Km3:04:504,370:49:034,543:04:23Arrivo3.15.424,380.10.524,573.15.15
Overall though I'm quite satisfied with the result and the race. The course was pretty flat and quite interesting as one got to see slower/faster runners quite a few places in the run from about 15km to 30 km. I wouldn't class the last 12km as "fun" but it was quite enjoyable before that and everything was very well organized.
Beyond the marathon, as a weekend though this was definitely a good vacation. Prague is a great city and the people are reasonably helpful and friendly. In fact we met a nice Czech guy at the airport and later on a guy from Costa Rica. On the Sunday evening we all hooked up and went on a food and beer crawl through Prague old town which was fun. We ended up in a Chilean bar in the Jewish "quarter" which was pretty cool.