Last Sunday, May 17th, together with my friend Juan, we traveled to Riga to take part in its marathon, a big event in the city with over 45,000 runners taking part in different races across various distances and over 2,500 runners registered in the marathon.
We picked Riga following our series of marathons abroad (to combine tourism with long distance running) that has taken some of us to run together in Paris, Berlin, Roma, Athens, Rotterdam, New York, Sevilla (x3), Madrid, Millau, Dublin (x2), Lisboa, Vienna, Krakow, Porto, Bucharest, Malaga, Alicante, Castellón and now Riga.
To prepare for this marathon I tried to follow the same 16-week training plan I had used in the past. However, since I had previously run the marathon in Castellón, by that date we were already in the 12 weeks prior to the one in Riga. I arrived at Riga with just over 350km in the legs in those 16 weeks, much less than I would have liked. I chose to skip the series training, as being overweight (96kg the day after the race), the series would hurt the Achilles tendon. I only did four long runs in those 16 weeks: the 42km marathon in Castellón (February 22nd), a 25km run and two 22km runs. To make it even worse, in April I started to feel pain in lateral tendon in the knee, so I decided to rest during the last 3 weeks of the plan to recover the knee as much as possible even if I was going to be unprepared for the race.
With that disastrous training behind and the injury, I doubted I would be able to finish the race and I only aimed at finishing the race, for which I would start with a pace for a 4h15′ marathon, to be followed until I could.
The profile in Riga is rather flat, with just a couple of climbs around bridges in the second half of the race. The organization prepared a circuit composed of several long avenues in the city centre and all the way to the Mezaparks in the North of the city. The organization was superb, with supply posts every 4-5 kilometers (though with liquids served in plastic cups, which is the least convenient option), some music bands, an impressive and overwhelming display at the Freedom monument including orchestra, choruses and dancers in traditional clothes…
The temperature was a bit fresh in the morning (~8°C), the sky was slightly cloudy and it would be a bit warmer towards the end of the race, though the temperature did not exceed 12°C. My strategy was to start at a pace just below 6min per km, with the group of 4h15′ (which also started a bit faster), and then, whenever I started to feel the lack of preparation, or pain in the knee, manage the situation the best I could.
The race started very early at 7:35am, luckily we had a hotel at 3 minutes walking distance from the start. I went with the 4h15′ group and Juan a bit forward. We wished luck to each other and ran separately. I ran comfortably until km 22; with the 4h15 pack until km 18. I started to feel pain in the knee at around the km 12, and got assistance with anti-inflammatory cream or spray 4-5 times during the race starting from km 14. From the km 22, I hit the lack of training and had to walk for some short stretches of ~100m here and there.
At around the km 35 I started to make numbers in my head and I got as plan C to finish below 4h45. In the end, I clocked a net time of 4h44’42”, a time 18-minute worse than the last marathon in Castellón, but happy to have completed my 27th marathon, easy to say today but not so on April 30th 2000 when I started in the distance in Madrid.
With those 4h44’42”, I was again above the 4-hour mark and finished in the 2052th place out of 2515 finishers (18% percentile). That time makes it my 3rd worst marathon, though with a positive feeling of having completed another marathon, having committed already 2 marathons in 2026, less than 3 months after the previous one. I am now looking forward to recovering from the injuries and better preparing the next one.
The Blog by Javier 