I recently completed my first ever cycling ‘race’, the 111km Giro d’Espoo, and I thought I should do a quick report, even though this was more of a fun ride than anything else. As readers will know, running is my forte when it comes to exercise, but I have been doing a little bit of biking as well, with my Specialized CruX Elite cyclocross. At some point I had an aspiration of having a go at a triathlon as well, but since swimming is really not something that I enjoy or am any good at, I’ve given up on that idea. However, I do like biking. I don’t think I’ll ever have any racing ambitions, but I did have fun at Giro d’Espoo and I’m now seriously considering Tour de Helsinki this September. This was also my longest bike ride to date, the previous one being only 73km (Helsinki-Riihimäki).

Fighting the wind on my own somewhere towards the end.

Bike races are not ‘races’ for the vast majority even in the sense that running races are, as riding in a group is such a big part of the event. Unless you’re up for fighting on your own or have a dedicated team, you will pretty much have to stick to the pace group that you choose in the beginning. I chose the 26km/h average speed group (including all breaks) at this race. That was probably the right choice, as the pace felt right most of the way, even though the group went rather fast for the average pace (over 29mk/h) to begin with. First official break was at 69km (10min), after which I had a bit of an unlucky start as I lost the group for a moment and had to catch up. That killed my calves (which were already sore from an interval session at the track from two days before!), and another mishap then caused me to lose the main group beyond recovery at around 80km. As it happens, that was also the beginning of the windiest section with a couple of hills. I tried to group up with some people every now and then, but ended up riding alone for a good 20km. That wasn’t much fun, but in the end I didn’t lose all that much time. I caught up with the 26km/h group at the 96km rest stop, but couldn’t start off with them as they were just about to leave and I needed to stretch my calves a bit. Took it easy for the last 15km and still finished in a reasonable time for my first ever ride of this length — in 4:19h.

No trouble with the bike or other mishaps, and I did really enjoy myself for the first 80km. The social aspect was also nice — given that the effort remains relatively low compared to running, it’s actually possible to have a bit of a chat while riding. I did much of the ride with Hege, who lured me to participate in this race, but also chatted with some strangers that I rode with. I have to say though that it’s a bit of a shock to finish in the last 20% when I’m used to being in the top 5-10% in running races!

The route of the race was nice, by the way, even if there wasn’t so much time for sightseeing. Not very many significant or bad hills, except for a couple towards the very end. Total height gain reported by Garmin just over 1100m.

Anyway, like I said I’m not taking a very competitive attitude towards biking. For one thing, the gear is just way too expensive. I only have the cyclocross bike at the moment, but I might be tempted to get a proper road bike at some point. I changed road tires to the cyclocross for this race and will probably use it exclusively for now though. One thing I’m considering is doing a bit of a bike tour to Turku via Hanko this summer, which would be something like 250km (split into two days, of course). I had ordered some new bike gear just before the race but unfortunately I only got it this week; at least I’ve got a good reason to do some longer rides now!

I had my Garmin and the HR monitor as well, so I’ll conclude with the data:

Garmin data here.

Race date: 15.4.2013
Official Finishing Time: 3:08:44 (chip time)
Official Position: 3495/xxxxx (race interrupted)
Race number: 3755

Any kind of conventional race report seems out of place after the incident in Boston. As my friends and family will know, I was not personally affected (physically) by the attack, but while I’m writing this post in Boston, things are still hardly back to normal. Many businesses are operating, but I’m sitting just ten meters away from the start of the blocked off area on Boylston street — the area is patrolled by hundreds of police officers and military personnel. I finished about an hour before the incident and I had already settled back at my hotel, some half a mile from the finish line, when the explosions took place. I heard them, but I didn’t think much about the noise at first, figuring that it was just fireworks or something. I did note the unusual amount of sirens though… Anyway, I don’t have much to add to the official news, since I wasn’t at the site when the incident took place, but what I can report is the feeling in Boston now. You can see it on people’s faces, it just doesn’t feel right. A lot of people are working normally today — although some are not — so they have to keep up the appearances, but it’s obvious that it’s not “business as usual”.

Because of all this, I’ll keep the actual race report brief. I was not expecting any great results, given a serious lack of training this past winter (partly due to injury, partly due to the Finnish winter). Because it was difficult and risky to do many long runs in training, I decided to try a different approach, focusing on speed training on the indoor track. Not that I did a huge amount of any training — my weekly mileage peaked at around 50 miles over the winter, compared to the 75+ mpw that I ran before Berlin.

So, I thought that I’d be happy with something in the range of 3:05, as I knew that sub 3h was not really on. But I had also underestimated the toughness of the Boston course. I knew about the notorious Heartbreak Hill, of course, but I didn’t realize that there are some three more hills between miles 16 and 20! None of them, including Heartbreak, are really bad, but obviously they do slow you down. There’s also plenty of downhill, but you have to save your legs a bit and not power the hills down too hard. Given all this, I’m satisfied with my result. The result also reflects the general field: the race numbers were assigned in the order of the qualifying time (apart from bib numbers 1-100 for the elite), so — in theory — I managed to improve my position by 260 places overall with regard to my starting position.

I’ll just paste the official splits here, without any in-depth analysis:

The Garmin data has more details:

Looking at the above data, it’s pretty obvious how things went down. I had decided to keep sub 3h pace until the half marathon point just out of spite, and it was easy enough, but I knew that I couldn’t keep it up on the second half, which is much tougher than the first. So, even though I could’ve probably kept sub 3h pace maybe as far as the 20 mile marker, I made the sensible choice of slowing down to avoid injury. It was a wise choice, as the last 10km were tough regardless. However, the heart rate data indicates that I was really doing quite ok towards the end, as the average heart rate dropped to 166bpm overall compared to 169bpm at Amsterdam in 2011 (I didn’t wear an HR strap in Berlin).

Other than the hills, the course is great, and the spectators make it even better — the super-loud Wellesley girls in particular… Race organisation is top notch as well, even if the security could’ve obviously been better. You do have to get up ridiculously early despite the 10am start (for Wave 1) though, since it takes an hour or more to catch the official bus to the starting line. The race village is good, with free coffee, bagels, massage etc., but it’s a bit boring to wait around for a couple of hours before the race starts.

I was pleased to have avoided any major calf cramping issues this time. I opted for more cushioned shoes (Mizuno Wave Inspire) and coated my legs with a generous amount of Extra Strength Tiger Balm — one of these or the two together kept cramps away for the most part. I did feel a little bit of cramping setting in at around 18 miles, but fortunately it passed quickly. However, I did also slow down considerably at that point, so I don’t know if the cramping would’ve set in had I kept the pace up.

By the way, this was the first time that I didn’t improve on my marathon PB — my fifth marathon overall, and third fastest after Berlin and Amsterdam.

Well, I don’t really feel great writing about racing or anything at this point, so I’ll leave it at this for now. Time to go and forget about it all at the Samuel Adams Brewery.

Race date: 30.9.2012
Official Finishing Time: 3:01:43 chip time, 3:03:16 gun time (PB)
Official Position: 1477/26452 (male finishers), which puts me in the fastest 5.58% (289th in my age category)
Race number: 27629

Berlin was my primary target for the year, and my only marathon this year (fourth overall). The year has been far from perfect in terms of running — I hadn’t managed a single PB before Berlin — so I was determined to make the most out of Berlin (as I’ve noted). Sub 3h was the target and I felt that it was realistic, on a good day. As you can see, I was less than 2min short, even though I did beat my Amsterdam time. My preparation had been going quite well, but about a month before the race I got stuck with a persistent niggle in the sartorius muscle of my right leg. I missed out on a couple of planned harder training sessions and the taper was not ideal, but I managed to keep the injury at bay. In fact, during the race I had no real trouble with it. So, what went wrong? Read on for the full story. I’ll write another post about Berlin itself with some more pictures later.

I was in Berlin with Elizabeth, who also ran the marathon (her second). She finished with a stronger PB than I did: 3:39:23, although her target was a more ambitious 3:30h.

No smiles here, just pain

Setting
The weather in Berlin was pretty much perfect for the whole duration of our stay: somewhat sunny, but not too hot. On race day the temperature was around +10 Celsius in the morning, getting up to maybe +17 Celsius by the time I finished. A little bit of breeze, but it was negligible in the crowds. We arrived in Berlin two days before the race, to have some time to settle down. The downside of this was that we ended up walking around quite a bit on the two days before the race. Part of this was due to the race expo, where race numbers had to be picked up. The expo takes place at a huge old airport, but it has been designed in such a way that one has to walk about 2km before there’s any sign of the race packs.. and then the same way back. We also did a short 2.5km jog on the day before the race. We didn’t buy anything from the expo, but the free non-alcoholic beer was a bonus. I had also ordered the official technical shirt with my registration, in XS. Turns out they didn’t have XS, so I was promised an S. I got an XL. I then tried to exchange it, but that also turned out problematic. After debating for a while with the non-English speaking staff I finally got the wrong size, i.e. S.

We had the advantage of staying in an apartment rather than a typical hotel, although it was quite far from the centre. This would have been ideal otherwise, but the window in the bedroom was somehow faulty and did not close at all. The temperature was not too bad despite this, but noise from the street was a bit of a problem. In particular, the night before the race was a Saturday and not only was the street full of people shouting, but some of them had explosives. Needless to say, we didn’t sleep as well as one might hope. We got up at 6am and had breakfast before setting off towards the centre.

Chilling out in sunny Berlin after the race

Since Berlin is such a big marathon and has been organized 38 times before, we assumed that everything should be fairly smooth. It wasn’t. The entrance to the official race area had been made rather difficult, and it took longer than one might hope. On a more positive note, dropping off bags was quite easy — a specific plastic bag was provided for this purpose. However, the real problem was the evident lack of toilets. When you’re expecting up to 40,000 runners, it would be nice to provide a couple of thousand toilets for them, but they had at best a few hundred. This resulted in ridiculous queues. With time running out many people, myself included, decided to head for the bushes. Well, I finally made it to my starting pen, “D”, just 10min before the start and squeezed my way towards the front (as it was for people with a previous marathon time of 3:00-3:15h; mine was 3:02h).

Post-race organization was decent, including a bag of goodies like bananas, water, and a protein bar, a pretty good post-race massage, and alcohol-free Erdinger beer. It was rather pleasant to stretch and sip beer after the race.

Performance
I was planning to set off at a steady 4:12min/km pace, which should be safe for a sub 3h marathon. It was impossible to do that on the first km, which was extremely crowded, but after that I got a nice pace going. I had been expecting crowds, but it was a bit overwhelming at times, even at the relatively fast end of the race. It’s telling that to get into the “A” starting group in Berlin, you have to have a previous marathon of sub 2:40h. Indeed, the course didn’t really open up until 35km or so, and at that point it was of no use to me as I was just struggling to keep running. The route itself is of course extremely fast. There are just a couple of gentle inclines, similarly to Amsterdam. I may prefer the Amsterdam course slightly, although it’s subject to breezes much more than Berlin, which is well protected by buildings.

The size of the Berlin Marathon does have a couple of distinct advantages: you’ll never be running on your own and there are official pacers. The fastest pacers are the 3h pacers, and my plan was to overtake them some time around the 10km mark and hopefully never see them again. However, they were actually going somewhat faster than I wanted to, partly because they started well ahead of me and, by the looks of it, were aiming to beat 3h gun time. So, I was content with just keeping the pacers in my sight (they carried balloons), until I finally overtook them around the 25km mark. I stayed in front until 32km or so, but they left me behind soon after the 35km mark. Nothing tells the story more dramatically than my 5k splits, from official timings:

To begin with I felt quite fresh and the first half of the race went by very quickly, mostly because I had to focus on getting a sensible route through the crowds. I had four Clif Shot gels with me and I took them at ~10km, ~20km, ~27km, and ~35km. I was quite pleased when I hit the half marathon point at exactly 1:30h gun time, meaning that I was almost minute and a half below that in chip time (1:28:36) — I was feeling great at that point. I felt the first impact of fast running already before the half marathon mark, but it was nothing alarming. The first alarming signs showed up around 27km, when I felt the beginnings of cramps in my calves. I had been dreading that moment, as my last two marathons, both in 2011, involved calf cramps in the last 12km.

Sightseeing on achy legs

This time I had prepared by getting Skins calf compression and I meant to strengthen my legs at the gym as well, but I could’ve done a better job at that. The calf compression did seem to alleviate the issue though. I was able to keep the pace up at a reasonable level until 35km, and I was still just about on target for a sub 3h finish. But it came with a price: I was in quite a lot of pain, and where the first half went by very quickly, 30-35km were extremely long. I kept telling myself that if I’m still on target at the 35km marker, then I can get under 3h, but in the process of making that happen my legs just seized up and I was starting to get concerned about being able to keep running at all. The rest of the race was a mental battle as I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep the pace up. When I look at the splits now, it’s rather heartbreaking to notice that even at 40km I would’ve still been within a shout of a sub 3h finish, had there been enough power in my legs to run a modest 2km at 4min/km pace. Yeah, right, 5min/km was just about beyond my ability. In fact, it became a question of pride not to fall beyond that, with my slowest lap being the 42nd km in 4:59,2. There was no finishing sprint left in those legs… For more details, see the Garmin data:

Analysis
A disappointment, obviously. Funnily enough, because it was still a PB, if only by 48 seconds. The disappointment is that I know I had sub 3h in me, if only my calves hadn’t given up the race so early on. This also means that not a single one of my four marathons to date has been a solid performance, even though Amsterdam last year almost felt like one due to a negative split. I need to sort out the cramps, that’s now a priority. Calf compression was not enough on its own, but I’ve been suggested salt tablets during the race and a thick layer of tiger balm on the calves just before the race. Anything is worth a try, I suppose. Really, I need to hit the gym and do consistent leg training to strengthen the calves (and quads, which were also close to giving in). On a more positive note, I have managed to improve my marathon time in all of my marathons. If I manage to keep that up, sub 3h can’t be very far.

The only thing that might’ve helped on race day would perhaps have been to get in some isotonic sports drinks, as I was on plain water for the whole race. I would’ve preferred to drink sports drinks at least on half of the aid stations, but because of the setup and the crowds it was almost impossible to get through to anything but the water. This makes me think whether a better electrolyte balance would’ve made a difference (although I doubt it). I should also note that due to the crowds, I ended up running a little bit of extra distance. Nothing significant, since marathon courses are always a little longer than advertised, but still; my Garmin reported a total distance of 42,83km, which makes my average pace just under 4:15min/km. This means that, in fact, I did cover the distance of a marathon — 42,2km — in less than 3h. Of course, it doesn’t count, and I did all my calculations with 43km in mind so it’s hardly an excuse either, but just another fact to dwell on…

Anyway, it’s back to the drawing board now, as they say. Gym work and short speed work will be in a major role, as I think that those are my weak areas — I’ve certainly conquered the distance given that I can run ultras without any issues, but speed endurance is still lacking. I hope to do a couple of shorter races before the year is over, but I’m already setting my sights for Boston 2013 in April, as I qualified with my Amsterdam time and already have a confirmed registration.

Official results here.
Garmin data here.