Notes
Usedom Marathon 2013
Swinoujscie, Poland to Wolgast, Germany
September 7, 2013 10:30 AM
Sunny ~78, 10 mph SE
I arrived in Berlin on August 25th for BASF and had 2 weeks’ worth of meetings and time to get acclimated to the time change, temperature and other variables in running a marathon in a drastically different time zone. There is a 12 hour difference from Kauai, so I had some major adjustments to do.
Training leading up to the race went well; I hit all my major long runs (special thanks to the Long Run Tuesday tradition!) and did regular runs throughout the remainder of the week. My last long run of 22 miles was 2 ½ weeks before the marathon. Everything went well except I twisted my ankle during that run. My ankle was sore from that point on until a couple days before the marathon when it finally started to subside. By race time it was ~95% and went unaffected throughout most of the race.
Friday September 6th marked the closure of the BASF meetings and I left for my ~3 hour train ride from Berlin to Wolgast. The train ride scenery was a pretty familiar one to Illinois as most of the land in this area is used for corn silage and livestock. Of course… all familiar until we reached the Baltic Sea!
When I arrived in Wolgast I was surprised to be greeted by the race director and he took me to the signup and my hotel. I could tell he was nervous about the marathon and all the logistics associated with putting on an event like this. I had sent him my train itinerary earlier on in the week and told him I would call him if I got lost… I guess he knew better than to take the risk and decided to meet me at the train station!
Race day came quickly, I slept restlessly waking up every hour on the hour, but, I slept. This race was a point to point race so I got to the gathering area where they bused us to the starting line crossing country lines into Poland – which was pretty cool. The race started in a small town in Poland and would have us run the streets in that town for ~3-4 miles until we crossed back into Germany. One of the challenges associated with this race was the kilometer splits; I had my average split numbers in my head but struggled with not having exact mile splits.
We all lined up and I found it interesting that everyone but me was wearing a shirt. I lined up right out in front so I figured if I was doing something wrong surely somebody would tell me (even if it is in German or Polish!) – I couldn’t help that funny feeling thinking I was doing something wrong but figured someone would let me know.
- Hold that thought –
The gun fired off and we were out running. I settled in ~4.00-4.20 a KM (~6.30-7 min pace) and felt comfortable at this pace. I really didn’t want to commit to a certain time but figured 3 hours would be me running out of my mind and 3.15 would be a realistic number given my performance during training.
I cruised through the first ~10 miles without having any issues, the course ran along the coast of the Baltic Sea most of the way and we would occasionally get views of the shoreline. Most of the course was on a concrete surfaced bike trail which was ok for a while but I knew it would eventually wear on me. For most of this part I was running in a pack of 3-5 guys, I would occasionally hear one of them say something to me and I would just smile and nod.
I was surprised by the number of hills on the course; I figured being this close to the Baltic Sea it would be pretty flat. Boy was I wrong. There was one section of the bike trail that had a sign that read 16% and had a picture of a hill. That is far from flat!
They had aid stations every 3-5 miles which was a little thin for the temperature but I was surviving. Then it happened, my funny feeling about “no shirt” at the beginning of the race started to bite me in the ass. At the mile 8 aid station an official in a red shirt started yelling at me in German, I tried to shout back that I only understood English – but it seemed not to work, so I started running again. Luckily race officials were only seen at the aid stations so I had another 3-5 miles to think about why he was shouting at me. They had an aid station at the halfway point and a different guy was there shouting at me. Again, I shouted back “only English” and didn’t get through… so I did what I was there to do… I kept running. At the mile 16 aid station, it happened, I entered into the aid station by myself and there was the same guy from the mile 8 aid station standing in my way and stopped me from running. He again spoke only German and finally someone from the crowd realizing what was going on translated for him. He was pointing at a rule book and was letting me know I was disqualified due to not wearing a shirt. With that knowledge in mind I start to take off my race number and was planning on running (just unofficially now). That was my plan until the guy translating stopped me and said, “Here wear my shirt” – I couldn’t believe it! I willingly accepted his offer and thanked him as best as I could. It was a 2XL but I didn’t care - I thought this is significantly better than being disqualified. I refused to ask the race official if this actually allowed me to officially finish but figured I would let it be a surprise in the end… I was finishing this marathon regardless (officially or unofficially). The only difference was I was swimming in a shirt from that point on!
From that occurrence I was frazzled and disappointed, that was a waste of 5 minutes of my race that I would not get back! I was trying not to let it bother me but could tell the stoppage affected my legs, they were cramping. In every marathon I have ever run there is always a point that I need to decide if I am going to slow down due to _(blank)_____. - this was that point -
I did what I could to settle back in but could tell the confounding factors of being frustrated, dehydrated and having sore joints from the concrete was taking its toll on me. As I passed through mile 20, big shirt tamed down from sweat, my race pace slowed to 8-8.30 pace – there wasn’t much I could do. I started to walk through the aid stations and tried to hold on as best as I could. Once we hit mile 23 I finally saw Wolgast and its big church steeple. This section was really scenic because I could see the draw-bridge, Baltic Sea and where I needed to finish. I pushed out everything I could on my way into Wolgast. As I was crossing over the bridge I got passed by another guy, I only bring this up because HE WAS NOT WEARING A T-SHIRT! I kept a close eye on this guy from this point on…
I got into town and we traversed our way to the local high school soccer stadium. I got into the stadium and picked up the pace, the announcer on the microphone shouted out my name just as he did for all the people in front of me. I crossed the finish line without incident and was given a finisher’s metal. I guess I officially finished shirt and all! As for the guy not wearing a shirt… he finished, with a medal around his neck as well. Entertaining…
3:22:43
Not as good as I had hoped but I was officially crowned an international marathon runner. I ended up 3rd place in my age division and somewhere around 20th overall. Not bad. My 19th marathon is officially in the books and I am happy I took the time to do this one while in Germany.
Simply put, this marathon time is reflective of my inability to pace early on. My average for this race was ~7:40 pace and I went out at 6:30 pace. 7:40 pace for 26.2 miles isn’t a bad average but I was trained to do much better than this – if I only paced out the beginning better. In my first hour of running I did more damage to my overall time than the subsequent 2 hours of running. I maintained this pace for ~6 miles, when I finally determined I needed to slow down and then held onto 7 minute pace for as long as I could only to slow down even further from there. Yes, I always have the will to finish but if I could only commit to knowing that running out of my mind early on does not translate into “gained time” I would be much better off. I think my challenge associated with this thought is I do one marathon a year, this does not translate into racing one marathon a year, this translates into finishing one marathon a year. I always believe I can race the marathon for a good time but also need to recognize I cannot judge pace that well with only running one marathon a year. In my next marathon (as long as I am trained to this same level) I have to go out at 7:30 pace and pick it up later on in the race if I feel like I can. Also the other thing I am going to do differently next time is to train with a running program. I need to fall back on Jeff Galloway or Hal Higdon to help guide me to a faster marathon finish. I believe I still have a sub-3 hour marathon in me it is just a matter of doing the things necessary to be successful at this pace.
KM Marker Mile Marker KM Split Mile Average
1 0.62 3:51 6:11
2 1.24 3:59 6:24
3 1.86 3:56 6:19
4 2.49 4:07 6:37
5 3.11 4:02 6:29
6 3.73 4:02 6:29
7 4.35 4:03 6:31
8 4.97 4:02 6:29
9 5.59 4:05 6:34
10 6.21 4:06 6:35
11 6.84 4:19 6:56
12 7.46 4:22 7:01
13 8.08 4:11 6:43
14 8.70 4:09 6:40
15 9.32 4:15 6:50
16 9.94 4:24 7:04
17 10.56 4:17 6:53
18 11.18 4:28 7:11
19 11.81 5:12 8:22
20 12.43 4:44 7:37
21 13.05 4:26 7:08
22 13.67 5:39 9:05
23 14.29 5:05 8:10
24 14.91 4:16 6:52
25 15.53 4:23 7:03
26 16.16 4:27 7:09
27 16.78 4:44 7:37
28 17.40 4:34 7:20
29 18.02 4:57 7:57
30 18.64 4:59 8:01
31 19.26 5:40 9:07
32 19.88 6:10 9:55
33 20.51 5:40 9:07
34 21.13 5:55 9:31
35 21.75 5:10 8:18
36 22.37 6:07 9:50
37 22.99 5:33 8:55
38 23.61 5:29 8:49
39 24.23 5:55 9:31
40 24.85 5:39 9:05
41 25.48 6:54 11:06
42 26.10 4:55 7:54