Today was the day of the truth- the day when i participated in a professionally organised race. Phoenix Park Dublin today saw a convergence of close to 6000 race participants and among that multitude was myself.
I was not expecting such a large crowd but hey it was fun. I was used to train by myself and today i was going to meet a different challenge altogether
When you train by yourself you are largely in control of the your own pace that you would like to maintain and you have no external pressures except if you use virtual training partners which comes with other GPS gadgets like garmin forerunner. I am trying to train with a focus on 40km marathon. This means that my body anatomy and physiology is biased towards endurance rather than speed.
I found the general pace of the race to be faster than what i am used to. I gave it all my best. No wonder why i recorded my personal best of 40mins .03 sec. I finished number 1175 out of a total of up to 6000. I came to the race hoping to finish under 1000 so i have to say i was disappointed by the outcome. In my category which i presume is for people over the age of 35 i came out number 195 which i think is not bad for a first timer.
i came to the race knowing very well that discipline was vital. i needed to maintain my speed and ignore other athletes who woild be zooming past me. I did not follow that wisdom at least at the beginning of the race . i think this resulted in me loosing my pace in the middle of the race.
i must have hit stop activity button by a accident at the 6 km peg om my runkeeper application but i captured the whole event on the garmin forerunner device.
i hit a top speed of 3 mins 36 sec at one stage but this was really taking it to the extreme. The poor old pump must have got the shock of its life!!
The hard part was seeing older folks than me sprinting past me as if i was a signpost or something like that. I took a lot of inspiration from that and i will be better prepared and more wiser in the next race.
It seemed to me everyone was trying to overtake me perhaps mistaking me for a native Kenyan, not knowing that i come from further down south were there is no known marathon pedigree.
Nice part was to take home my souvenior.
Total tally stand at 50km so far. The next competitive race is the 10 miler in a month's time. Bring it on.
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