Hi,
So, going into the Berlin Marathon, I'm going to be trying something I've never done before, trying to run faster than I've ever run before in a marathon, and hopefully break 3 hours in the process.
The good news is that I did run faster than I've ever run before in a marathon, setting a new personal best of 3:21:25. The bad news is that personal best was obviously not under 3 hours.
My main aim was for my running this year was to qualify for Boston 2011 (run 3:10:59 or under in the under M35 age group). Then for some reason I upped the stakes a lot higher by setting a goal to break 3 hours in a marathon.
I admit, I did feel a little bummed when I fell so far short of this target. Actually, the writing was on the wall when I couldn't hit my target times consistently in training and in racing. But since I went into the race without putting any pressure or expectation to run as fast as I could, I was able to produce my best performance on that day, running a personal best. 80 seconds is a modest improvement from 3:22:45 from last year's Berlin Marathon, but put simply, if I had put pressure on myself to run faster than I've ever run before, there was no way that I would've set that PB on race day. So, from that perspective, I think there's hardly any reason to be disappointed. Looking back, my target was so optimistic, but as they say, if you shoot for the moon and miss, at least you'll land among the stars.
It's not my turn yet to break 3 hours, but I will get there even if it takes one minute at a time.
On to the race itself. Unlike last year, the conditions were much cooler, but there was heavy rain beforehand which caused a few large puddles on the course. Waiting in the starting pen in Tiergarten on Straße des 17. Juni with nearly 48000+ runners while it rained wasn't a nice experience, but at least it wasn't 20 something degrees like last year. The music, This is The Moment, from the musical, Jekyll & Hyde, was playing from the loudspeakers, coupled with the release of hundreds of green balloons slowly rising high in the air. When you're out there on the biggest stage trying to prove something and reaching an unlikely target, it felt like The Moment before I even took my first stride! But I reined in the emotions and tried not to go out on the course in a blaze of glory.
And when I got out there in the wet, I was running somewhere around 4.7 min/km pace in the early kms, much slower than the required 4.25 min/km pace to break 3 hours. There were crowds of runners all around me to contend with early on, but I don't think I made an effort to avoid them. For some reason I didn't want to speed up in the first 20 kms; all I kept telling myself was to relax and enjoy The Moment. The Boston qualifying time was probably still realistic, but I had to make something happen in the second half of the course to do this. With the cooler temperatures this year, I had a decent chance.
I hit the half way point half a minute slower than last year, but still felt quite strong and was hoping that I could just cruise to the 20 mile mark and make it happen in the last 6 miles. Unfortunately I couldn't stay strong throughout. At 23 km, I developed some discomfort in my right hamstring, and stopped briefly to stretch it. I did try to take my mind off the pain, and it did go away. However the pain continued to return, subside, and return again as the race progressed further, and I ended up slowing down to around 4.8 mins/km pace by the 30 km mark.
Of course I got even more tired and my pace between 30 - 40 km went from 4.8 min/km pace to a shade over 5 min/km pace. Knowing that getting into Boston was going to be unrealistic, I said to myself that there's no way I'm leaving Berlin without a new PB, especially with all the hard work I've put into training. Then I thought about that video, about the guy who broke 3 hours in his 11th Boston Marathon and how he must've worked and how he was feeling in those final miles. If he could finish with a new personal best, then I can too!
So around 38 km, and the stage where the runners enter Potsdamer Platz, I made up my mind to go faster. I kept surging, surging on Potsdamer Straße, Leipziger Straße, Jerusalemer Straße, Charlottenstraße, and finally Unter den Linden, wanting that PB, bleeding, clawing and scraping for it to happen. Every time I surged I had to slow down, but once I recovered I surged again, and again, and again. I kept doing this, visualising that I was breaking down a brick wall with a mighty sledgehammer (not that I was really hitting the dreaded wall myself!). It was a battle, not only with my legs but with my mind, a battle I can safely say I won.
When I got to the Brandenburg Gate, just shy of the 42 km mark, I knew that I had a personal best in the bag. Like last year, I consciously ran through the middle column of the structure, experiencing the same thrill when I first ran Berlin. So it was there that I poured it out on the final stretch until I crossed the finish line feeling like I had nothing left in the tank.
I was shattered both physically and emotionally. I honestly gave it my best that day. Trying my best to ignore the pain that was starting to kick in from sudden inactivity, I reflected on the entire journey leading up to Berlin. It has been such a long season by non-elite athlete standards, I felt like I've been running forever and needed a well-deserved break from it all!
A few days after the race, I've had a chance to reflect on my performance, my year of running and my goals. I can honestly say that I ran my best race, but thinking that I could do it in 3 hours or less was very optimistic of me. I've learned the hard way that it takes a lot of time and effort and, for me, much more than a year's worth of running to reach it. Having said that there's absolutely nothing wrong with setting lofty goals, so if you don't meet your goal in the first place, don't let that discourage you from trying again. Failure is not falling down but refusing to give up. There will always be other marathons, and other fast courses for me to go out and break 3 hours. Now is not the time.
With regards to my training, I think that by joining the FP Run Club I was able to get some new and fresh ideas for training for a marathon. The sub-3 hour programme was tough but I managed to stick to it, even though I wasn't on track for a sub-3 hour performance. Being asked to run a sub 1:30 half marathon by week 6 of the programme was not realistic for me, so that was when I knew it was going to be an improbability to meet my target. The good thing is that the training programme can be reapplied for future marathons.
Looking to the future, I'm still intent on breaking 3 hours, but to have a decent chance of meeting my target, I will need to switch focus from being a marathon runner to running shorter distances. Don't get me wrong - long distance running is still my focus and my passion, but if I want to get faster in a marathon I need to learn how to run faster over these shorter distances, e.g. mile, 3k, 5k distances. My times over these distances aren't that fast, I think my best 5k time is a shade under 21 mins, which isn't too shabby but could do with lots of improvement. Once I learn how to run faster over these distances, then this will go a long way to running a marathon at the pace required to break 3 hours.
So what's next for me? Well, I registered for the Athens Marathon, but at the moment I haven't recovered fully from Berlin and it will take some time to do so. My right hamstring hasn't really responded well to rest, and I managed to catch a nasty cold a couple of days after the race, so regrettably I am going to withdraw from Athens and take a break from running for an extended period of time. The break will allow me to reassess my running goals both over shorter distances and marathon distance. For shorter distances, I would really like to run a sub-19 min 5k, a sub-40 min 10k, and also have another shot at a sub-1:30 at the Reading Half Marathon, which I've entered for the 3rd time! A chance for me to really get faster and have a much more realistic chance of breaking 3 hours next year! But for now, rest, recovery and doing the things I couldn't do so easily while I was in training. There are a lot!
There have been a fair amount of people that have been instrumental thus far who deserve special mention. In no particular order:
- The Oslo project team, or Team Oslo, or Team Åwesome, for always keeping me in check with my training, especially Andrew and Mohannad for giving up some of their time to help me in training
- My various Twitter and blog followers, and also like-minded marathon runners in joining me for the ride and providing their support. Special thanks to AndrewENZ, shafk, si_brim and others for sharing their experiences and feedback along the way. Much appreciated!
- George Anderson and the FP Run Club for giving me a new approach to training, and something for me to build on in the future.
- My Oslo masseuse, Aina, for working her magic and being generous with her rates, time and knowledge.
- My good friends and the two S's - Shaun and Shanta. Shaun, for helping me in training with his sometimes tortoise-like pacing, and being a good sport and great company while I was training in the UK despite a couple of horror stories which will make great roasting material about him! Shanta, for imparting her infinite wisdom on things not related to running, but relevant to life itself. Because there is more to life than just running, even though it never felt like that over the past year!
- The rest of the gang, too numerous to mention by name, back in UK, NZ and, last but not least, Palma for their humour, support and other contributions to keep me entertained and motivated.
- And my family for being supportive of my running, even though I don't come from a family of runners. This will definitely change from now on.
This blog is a journey and so far it's still an ongoing one. In the meantime, I'm going to take a break from running so that I can reassess my goals and set new ones along the way. This means I won't be updating my blog for a while. I have to say that training and maintaining a blog at the same time is very hard work (believe me, there have been times where I don't want to do either!). Hopefully I won't be out of action for too long and hopefully you'll be around when I resume the journey of breaking 3 hours!
Signing off for now,
Aaron
P.S. Me with Berlino the Bear at the Berlin Marathon expo. Yeah, me and Berlino are good mates! After the race we exchanged phone numbers.
