Race date: 16.10.2011
Official Finishing Time: 3:02:31 chip time, 3:03:08 gun time (PB)
Official Position: 648/9633 (finishers), which puts me in the fastest 6.73% (215th in my age category)
Race number: 1597

My second marathon this year and third overall. The two previous ones where both in Helsinki, on a much slower course, so I assumed that a new PB would be guaranteed, but I’m pleased that I managed to shave off a good 12min of my previous time and make it so close to the 3h mark.

Somewhere along the course...

Setting
It’s possible to sign up for the Amsterdam marathon quite late and it’s not the most expensive one. The race is well established though (36th edition) and the organization was mostly good. I only arrived in Amsterdam quite late the previous night, so I didn’t have a chance to pick up my race pack in advance. Fortunately my friend Ulrike who also ran the race was in town earlier and was able to pick up mine as well, so that I didn’t have to do it in the morning. It was a pretty chilly morning and I contemplated for a long time whether I should run in long sleeves and leggings or shorts and a singlet. In the end I went for the shorts since it was sunny and bound to get warmer. Gear storage operated smoothly, but there appeared to be a severe lack of toilets, since the toilet queue was rather long. I just about managed to fit in the necessary pre-race toilet visit before getting in the stadium, which served both as the start and finish of the race. Got into my starting pen (B, sub 3h) just in time.

Everything on the course worked just fine, although I can never get enough liquids from the small cups that they use in the drinks stations. Apparently there would’ve been some kind of a possibility for personal drinks as well, since they did have tables with bottles on them. There was no information about this available though. Well, it wasn’t too hot, so this was not a major issue, and I in fact started with a 0.5 litre bottle of sports drink in hand. I also consumed 10 Clif Shot Bloks (the Black Cherry flavour, with 100mg caffeine per six pieces). I could complain about the lack of post-race goodies: half a banana and some water and a sports drink is hardly a feast, and you actually have to go outside the stadium to get these. Well, I had my own nutrition.

Conditions in Amsterdam were ideal for running: sunny with a high of maybe 15 degrees Celsius and just a little bit of wind. The course itself is of course one of the fastest out there, being virtually flat. The surface is mostly very good as well. A nice and competitive field, with the top six all under 2:07! It’s telling that I was nowhere near the top 5% even with a time so close to 3h.

Finishing sprint

There are some decent photos of me by the official photographers for a change, I decided to buy them for the first time.

Performance
I had a flexible set of targets for this race. The minimal target was a new PB, so sub 3:14:45, but that was supposed to be quite easy given the fast nature of the course. I gave up any hope of sub 3h already after the Helsinki Marathon, since I thought that shaving 15min off would be too much to ask. However, I thought that sub 3:10 would be quite realistic, and sub 3:05 would be amazing. So I set 4:20min/km as my target pace, in the hopes that when the inevitable drop in pace happens towards the end, I could at least still get under 3:10. Well, I’ll let my splits (from chip) speak for themselves (5k times in brackets):

5k 22:32
10k 43:48 (21:16)
15k 1:05:15 (21:27)
20k 1:26:44 (21:29)
Half marathon 1:31:26
25k 1:47:56 (21:12)
30k 2:09:01 (21:05)
35k 2:30:41 (21:40)
40k 2:52:50 (22:09)

Pace Graph

I can hardly believe those splits: I actually ran the second half in 1:31:05 — a negative split! After struggling quite badly on the last 10k of both of my previous marathon efforts, I couldn’t have dreamt of running so consistently. No doubt the flat course is what made this possible, but I also think that the few marathon+ length training runs (up to 58km) made a huge difference for my endurance. This pace had its price though: from about 30km onwards I could feel my calfs getting tight, especially the left one. This was an issue in my last marathon as well. So, the last 10km were more of a fight to maintain form and pace while hoping that my calfs won’t cramp too badly. There were a couple of times that I just had to drop the pace a little bit to stop that from happening. Quite irritating as well, since mentally and otherwise I was doing quite well and feeling positive — I think I could’ve even increased the pace and gotten very close to 3:00 if it weren’t for the cramping. This is something I need to sort out before my next go at the marathon. I don’t think it’s an electrolyte, hydration or nutrition issue, it’s more likely that my gait is where the problem lies — that or just not being used to maintaining this sort of pace over the marathon distance. But I’m not sure what to do about this… At the very least I think I will invest in some compression socks or ‘calf guards’ and see if they help at all.

I was not feeling very confident when I set off for this race, partly because I had just recovered from another little flu (I’ve had an alarming number of these this year) and partly because my training over the summer just hasn’t been what it was supposed to, mostly due to travelling and illness. For this reason I thought I’d be a little bit careful, and I certainly didn’t want to set off too fast. Well, the first 10k went by exactly on target pace, and it was only after those first 10k that I really felt that I was getting into the run. The crowds eased up a little bit as well, and I found myself actually picking up speed rather than taking it easy. Part of the motivation for this may have been that I wanted to catch up with Ulrike, who set off from the same starting pen, but evidently slightly faster since I hadn’t seen her yet. I caught up with Ulrike around the 16km mark and just thought that I’d try to keep it steady until the inevitable collapse that I was expecting any time after the 30k mark. It was some time before that mark that I passed Ulrike, who had been setting a nice pace for me, and thought I’d try and see just how long I can keep up the sub 4:20min/km pace that I was running at. By 35km, having just ran my fastest 5km of the race, I realized that there was no wall in sight and if it hadn’t been for the calf cramps I would’ve probably increased the pace even further — the 39th km was my fastest at 4:04,9, and the first one was the slowest at 4:44,9 (due to the crowds of course). I even managed a sprint finish, which is something that was out of the question at both of my previous marathon efforts. Ulrike finished less than 2min behind me, placing impressively in the women’s race (41).

The well-deserved medal

Analysis
Needless to say, I’m very happy with the result. It seems like on a good day and in ideal conditions I might be in sub 3h marathon shape, which is something I thought I’d still have to work towards. That’s an obvious goal for next year, but I guess that I should set my sights ahead a little bit and aim for something like sub 2:55. I haven’t signed up for any marathons yet, but I’m thinking that one in the spring and one in the autumn might be a possibility. For the spring I’ll have a look at what’s on in the US, since I’ll probably be there anyway, and I’m thinking of Berlin as a possibility for the autumn, since it would be a good race to look for a fast time, and it’s also one of the ‘big five’ without being too difficult to get in. Running sub 3:05 has one advantage: it qualifies me for the 2013 Boston Marathon…

The Garmin reports my average heart rate at 169bpm, which is plausible, but probably a bit higher than it was in reality because there appears to have been a bit of a glitch in HR data around the 2h mark. The average pace was 4:17min/km in the end, and the total distance recorded was 42,61km.

I ran my previous marathon in my Adidas Adizero Tempo racers, but since I had the calf cramping issue then I thought that I’d move one step towards more cushioning and chose to run in my Mizuno Elixir 5s. I haven’t covered this type of distance in them before, but they did feel (and look!) very good throughout the race — not that they helped with the calf cramping issue though.

One more thing to note is my post-race soreness. In addition to the usual muscle pains, especially in the calfs, I’ve had all sorts of niggles: pain on the table of my right foot, some soreness in the TFL/ITB of my left leg, and worse than anything else, severe pain in the outside of the back arch of my left foot — I’m thinking that this may be inflammation of the flexor tendons, but don’t really know enough anatomy. It’s my third day off running now, and the last of the mentioned problems is still very much present, although strangely it only kicked in some 36h after the race. Anyway, this is a useful reminder that it takes a while to recover from longer races and that it’s not very healthy to push the body like this! Well, hopefully it’s nothing that will prevent me from getting back to training soon, as I’m quite motivated to do so now.

Official results here.
Garmin data here.