In December I
decided that I wanted to run a marathon, looking for one near the end of 2013 I
found the marathon of Amsterdam as my target. However I wanted to experience
how it was to run in such a big crowd and in a competition kind of way. For
this I signed up in February for the half marathon of Leiden on the 26th of
May, I reckoned that I would have enough time to prepare the the 21km and
97meter that would be ahead of me. Having had my fair share of running
injuries, all of them by thinking that I could do this easily, I found out soon
that taking things slow and building it up was for the better. So even before
the half marathon I did the 10km in Rotterdam as a first test run. I was fully
up and running by then and had put in some nice 17 and 18km runs...
But then the week
before Queensday disaster struck! (a month before the half marathon). I hit my
knee while biking on a steel cast pole, might have been a bit of karma biting
me because I was cycling through a non-biking area. Back to hitting my knee, I
took a hefty hit on the right side of my right knee and I actually decided just
to continue biking the 10km to the swimming pool, yes I am a bit easy on
shrugging off some pain. And the swimming actually went pretty well, but as soon
as I left the swimming pool and started biking back it felt like a balloon
was blowing up in my knee, and by the next morning, I could barely walk.
So I put my leg up, keeping it cool with ice and some special cream to reduce
the swelling and that actually helped immensely the swelling went away with 6
days, though I could go for a stroll, running still proved to hurt very much
especially the side of my right knee. This unfortunate accident took away
roughly 2.5 weeks of my running schedule and I decided to go for an all in two
weeks ago and pull of an 19km run just to see if my knee could handle it, and
actually I didn’t experience any problems, just a small itch but nothing else.
This decided it for me that I was still in the running for the Leiden half
marathon.
Now onto the
events of the half-marathon, it was an even greater experience. Where I took
off to soon in the 10km I actually reigned myself in and to keep to the pacing
of the crowd. However the organization made the full marathon and the half
marathon start at the same time at the same position and the first 10km of the
course was the same for both distances, this did added some more chaos to the
run itself, not really allowing me to run my own pace. Luckily after about 6km
there was more distance being created between runner and this gave me a chance
to run at my own pace for the remainder of the run. I immediately added more
speed to my run, had a great flapjack to start off the run and I did feel the
energy it gave me, but was quite relieved to see the water and energy drink
posts as well. They also served half bananas at the 15.5km mark, but let me
say, never again. I am not going to eat any solid food again while running, man
it gave me an upset stomach! Just sticking to fluids from now on.
Running those
21097 meters actually was pretty refreshing allowing me to think about a lot of
stuff, like what will my next book be (just one among others).
Now it time *drum
roll* please for the time! I was aiming to run below 1hour 40minutes. This
would mean an average speed of 13.5km/h.
Participant
|
Naam
|
Jasper
de Joode
|
|
Town
|
Zevenbergen
|
|
Start
number
|
6059
|
|
Category
|
21km van Zorg en Zekerheid
|
|
GJ
|
1987
|
Totals
|
Place
|
182
|
|
Clean
Time
|
1:32:56
|
|
Raw
Time
|
1:35:37
|
|
Average
pace
|
4.24
min/km
|
Overall I
couldn't be more pleased with my time! 1h32min56seconds! The setting of the
Leiden marathon was great, a very nice running course. I plan to revisit this
marathon next year again!
Now it's time to
up the ante and get ready for the full marathon this October. I also got some
other running events to look forward to. The Bredase Singelloop in 6th of
October, also an half marathon and the Tilburg Ten Miles (Ten English Miles)
1st of September this year.
Here's the medal
I got
And here I am quite happy with it!
