North Strides

When I arrived home from the Zurich Marato Barcelona my mind started drifting towards a thought: where should I run next. This is quite funny, because like always at some point between 25 and 30 kilometers I had to remind myself, why I am doing this and I also thought that I am never going to run a marathon again. Somehow all these thoughts vanish, when I hit the finish line. I guess this is familiar to all marathoners, who just keep on running.

This time I set myself four different targets: 1. To get under 3:40, 2. To get under my PB 3:46, 3. To get under 4:00 and finally 4. To finish the marathon. Why so many: I like to keep my spirit high also in case everything doesn’t go smoothly (which is most of the times). Then I have achieved at least one of my objectives and can enjoy the sense of accomplishment.

I visited the marathon expo Saturday morning to get my bib number. No queues, which was a great surprise! Ended up buying one nice shirt, but unfortunately had to leave the Sweat Stop bottle on the shelf due to the sellers not accepting card payments. This is actually a good reminder for everyone: You might want to have some cash with you since still today some of the expo sellers don’t have card payment possibilities.

The morning of Sunday 16th of March was sunny and +10C (up to +13C) with almost no wind, so a perfect weather for running a marathon. I stayed in an apartment close to the startline together with a few people from Tampere Marathon Club who I met during my earlier marathon travels. The location was perfect and I joined my start group half an hour before the start with the running gear on and my dad’s old coat to warm me. I have started to ask my family to give me all their old clothes they don’t anymore use so that I have something that I feel ok to leave to the start area. In many places the clothes are collected to homeless people, which is also a bonus.

I am usually a little nervous during the morning hours on the marathon day, but it helps when I look around and enjoy the atmosphere, sharing the joint jittery and excitement. And after a short wait, we are off! I felt great and started the marathon according to my planned pace at around 5:12 per km. My running was smooth and blood sugar stayed on an excellent level for the whole journey, which meant that I was able to take energy gels every sixth kilometer. However, this time I made a rookie mistake…

During this training season, I changed from High5 Aqua Gels to Nosht High Energy Sports drink (blueberry and lingonberry), since it tastes super good and suits my purposes better (due to type 1 diabetes, a full gel is quite a lot of carbs at once, so I rather have smaller amounts more often). For the marathon I decided it is easier to go with the gels again. Since I hadn’t used those gels for a while, my stomach didn’t seem to like them. The first two ones were ok, but then I gradually started to feel worse. It was ok until around 25k, but then I had to stop and walk for a while so that I wouldn’t throw up. I drank some more water and took two Jollos energy balls (from Nosht), which seemed to help so that I could continue running. Note to myself: next time consider the energy choices more carefully.

I finished the race with a time of 3:48, which wasn’t bad considering the challenges. I would definitely recommend Barcelona to everyone: a flat course, nice crowds and energy, beautiful route around the city and the start + finish line were in a central location.