Over four months have sped by since my last blog post. I have thought of writing several times - just have not been able to make the time to do it. In fact an overhaul of the blog is overdue - It appeared in my annual list of goals in 2013.
When, in December 2015, we started planning a vacation in Europe from 1st to 14th May 2016 I decided to try and run my first marathon in continental Europe the weekend of 7th/8th May. I knew for sure that I would be going to Italy and returning from Paris(we were travelling with my brother and his wife). And a third yet to be finalised country in between. Using the European marathon calendar here I found Prague Marathon as well as a few marathons in Italy that weekend. Prague is supposed to be a very beautiful run. However, being one of 14 IAAF Gold label runs it was already sold out(has a limit of 10,000 runners). After researching the various options in Italy I zoomed in on Green Europe Marathon in Trieste, a city on the Adriatic sea coast in Northern Italy close to the Slovenia border. It seemed a very pretty course and was not too much out of the way from Venice en route to Salzburg in Austria.
I resumed my marathon training (that is long runs of 30K+) in Feb end. The training went quite ok - though March and April were very busy both from work and personal perspective. A nip in the left leg from a street dog while walking to work causing me to take Tetanus and anti-rabies vaccinations was a bit of a setback.
The two runs in Rome and Florence the week before the run went well despite lot of sightseeing time on the feet and the slight cold and running nose. Race day experience on 8th May was fabulous despite disappointing finish timing. After a great 1st half (sub 1:49) I started to struggle a bit around and then the pace literally went downhill from Km 30. I finished in 3:49:25 - 5 minutes slower than target. Nevertheless, thoroughly enjoyed the route - hope to post a detailed report by the next weekend.
With the running season in progress my goal is to post regularly now on - with at least one general post a month not related to a specific event ; and the v2.0 of the blog by Jan 2017!!Only time will tell whether I will be able to achieve this or not.
No comments:
Post a Comment