Martin @ Blog

Today was the half marathon of Eindhoven. About three four months ago, the company I work for launched the idea to run the marathon of New York next year. While I’m not a runner (the only serious running I did until then, was an 8km for the Batavierenrace, a estafette run from Nijmegen to Enschede). But the oppertunity to run the marathon of New York sounds challenging, so I decided to give it a try. Starting in June, I did some running until I could run 10km relatively easily.
Toghether with a friend, we got the idea to run the half marathon of Eindhoven which happened today (12th of October 2008). Since we’re both pretty fanatic, we didn’t just wanted to finish, but also run a decent time. So in July we started to train seriously, I ran about three times a week then and we ran one time a week toghether. We thought we were prepared for today, so fit and in the best condition ever, we appeared at the start of the half marathon this morning.
We planned to run at least the first ten kilometres toghether and after than we would see what happened. I expected that Maikel (my fellow runner) would be a little faster; his goal was 1:40 and I tried that as well. Unfortunately, just before the start, the sun started shining, making it pretty hot for an Sunday in October (approx. 19 degrees Centigrade).
The first ten kilometres, we ran exactly according to plan, and we crossed the 10km sign after 50 minutes (perfectly on target for a 1:40 finish). After about 12 kilometres, I had to run a little bit slower because my hearth rate was pretty high. Maikel kept its pace, so we lost eachother at that point. After 14km, I thought I would not going to get to the finish, but kept running. After the refreshing point at 15km, I reduced my speed, drank a lot and poured some water over me and continued running. After that break, the running was a little easier, and at the Dommelstraat (about 3km before the finish) I really got some new energy. Fortunately, at that point most of my supporters were standing and they thought I was doing very well. Eventually I managed to finish in 1:48:04; a time I was very happy with consedering I’m only running for four months now. Maikel finished in 1:42, you can see him finishing on a video at the Omroep Brabant site.
Up to the next challenge.. and maybe we will run in Eindhoven next year!

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 12th, 2008 at 20:30 and is filed under English. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.