Berlin marathon

Last September 30th I completed the Berlin marathon together with my friend Serna and brother Jaime. This was the second marathon we ran together (the previous one being Paris 2012). The sixth one I ran.

Jose, Jaime and I in the runners’ fair.

The morning of the marathon I published a post in which I explained how I arrived at it in terms of training: I suffered an injury about 1.5 months prior to the race which didn’t allow me to practically train during the last month. Previously I had been training well and accumulating many kilometres.

My bib number for the race:

My Berlin Marathon bib number: 14028.

You may see the route of the marathon and my performance as recorded by my Garmin GPS here:

My Berlin Marathon Garmin records.

I started with a bracelet with references for a 3h40′ marathon, 5 minutes lower than in Paris. My plan was to start at that pace (5’13” per km) and keep it until I could. I was expecting that I would not be able to run the whole of it and that I would have to walk in case the Achilles tendon was hurting again. If that happened the later it occurred the better. Thus the faster I could go at the beginning the better for having to walk less distance at the end.

I did the half marathon in slightly above 1h47′, better than in Paris and was still feeling OK. Though at km 23 I started feeling hard to make kilometres under 5’20” (lack of speed endurance work and series in the last month)… I started to think of managing the margin I had built.

Finishing the marathon (km. 42).

However, 5 kilometres later I started to feel the ankle getting harder and some cramps in the quadriceps of the right leg (lack of kilometres and long runs in the last month). I then decided to slow down, otherwise I would have to start walking soon (when you get these cramps, the following step is feeling the muscle like a rock and not being able to run… experience from marathons 1 and 3).

From then on I clocked 6′ per km, then 6’20”, 6’35”, 6’40″… but I was still quite happy as at every kilometre I was making the numbers in my head: “if I keep this pace, I can finish in 3h53′ “, then “3h55′ “… I finally clocked: 3h57’48”, but at all times I knew I could complete it and that I was going to be under 4 hours, thus I just kept on running and smiling.

See the analysis of Garmin records by kilometre below. You can see how the pace was at each stage as I explained it above.

My Berlin Marathon running pace per km (mm:ss).

Two more pictures to complete this post: my finisher diploma and the detailed street map of the route.

Berlin Marathon detailed street map.

Next stop: Maratona di Roma, 17th March 2013.