Dublin City Marathon 2010- Taming the Beast

 
Having failed to be part of the elite sub4 brigade in the 2009 edition of the Dublin City Marathon I dedided to give a go once again- with the same goal and maybe different tactics. I am glad that this time around I just about managed to finish just under 4 hours (3hrs: 55 mins).

2009 I was a marathon rockie and this year I though I might use a little bit of experience whic I gained from my marathon debut last year. The first time around I was not familiar with the marathon course and I found out the hard way! The course is relatively flat for the first 27 km. The next 8 or so km consist of  a series of steep rises which usually come at a point when most of us are barely hanging in there.


This time around I was familiar with the course and I knew the challenge that lay ahead. I had 2 options.

Option One
One option was to follow the experts advice, which formed one of the 20 tips form the Dublin Marathon 2010 Complimentary race Programme Magazine. The tip form the article entitled '20 Tips For the Road', adviced inexperinced racers to avoid running too hard from the onset bacause 'bad pace judgement in the fisrt half will be paid for in spades later on'.

Option Two
 Option 2 was for me to take-off at a relatively fast pace and then hope that by the time I hit 'the wall'Ii would have done enough to ensure that I finish within the set time.

Against expert advice I decided to go for option two. I must say I almost paid the prize for chosing this crazy tactic but at the end it worked. I started off at a relatively fast pace. I started the race  behind the 4 hour pace setters and I pushed on until I was neck to neck with the 3:45hrs pace setters from about 5km before the half way mark. I stayed with these guys for the good part of 10km. This was probably  my steadiest part of the race and it probably helped me with the ultimate goal. My legs and soul gave in at around 33km predictably so, I must add. The pace setters left me for dead and this was when the real struggle begun. I struggled to complete the last 9km and I was averaging between 7 and 9 minutes per km.
Clearly I was regretting why I did not listen to the experts advice. I just hoped I had done enough in the first 33km to ensure that I finish in less than 4 hours!  Luckily I had done enough for me to afford a pace of between 7 and 9 minutes per km for the last 9km.

My reasoning for not choosing option one was based on the fear that if I maintained a slower pace from the onset, one sure thing was that I was still going to hit the wall although this was likely to be at a further distance than in option 2. However my fear was that I would have been left with very little time to spare in relation to the distance left.

The race started off on a chilly October Morning and soon the temperatures picked up to a comfortable 12 degrees.

This year I decided to use the Nike+ application on the Iphone because of its easy to use features. The app worked fine for me. I will review the App in my next post. I also had the irreplaceble Garmin Forerunner 405 with me.

I must say the new powersongs that I added to my playlist helped me at least for the first 2 thirds of the race. The songs were relatively ineffecitive in the last 8 km of the race because I was beyond any form of motivation. I added to my playlist Shakira's Waka Waka (This time for Africa) and the evergreen Tina Turner- Simply the Best.