Well, that was way harder than expected. And I’m not that happy about it.
Last week (https://www.strava.com/activities/12971960713) I was saying I was going to pace myself based on my heart rate (“I'm going to aim to run it at 145 - 155 bpm”).
That went very, very well. I managed to control my pace based on heart rate the whole marathon. I didn’t care if it felt like the whole marathon was passing me. I just followed my heart rate. My final average heart rate was 164 bpm (85% of my maximal heart rate).
I also did very well at following my nutrition plan. One gel every 20 minutes. Not much merit though. Yesterday I discovered it was possible to set my watch to trigger an alarm every 20 minutes. That made following the plan very easy.
So, why am I not that happy?
It just felt very hard.
Not at the beginning.
In fact, it was not hard at all for the first 25km. I was keeping my heart rate at 145 bpm. Around that mark I started with higher doses of caffeine. In my mind I was going to accelerate my pace to a heart rate closer to 155 bpm from the 30 km mark.
But from kilometre 25 my right leg started to send me messages.
The message was something like “A big muscle is about to give up and that is going to be very, very painful”.
Last (and first) time my brain received that message was back in 2008. The third time in my whole life I rode a [rented] road bike. The first time in my whole life I took part in a cycling sportive (148 km, 3370m). I was second to last of the whole peloton. (the report, in Spanish, is at: https://www.unbiciorejon.com/2008/06/x-marcha-cicloturista-lale-cubino.html).
To write this report I had to Google what muscle was about to give up. I don’t know much about anatomy but it is either the Rectus Femoris, the Abductor Longus, or the Vastus Lateralis. You tell me.
My brain registered the message but I decided to keep following the plan. Heart rate at 145 bpm.
Things got worse at kilometer 30.
Now my left leg sent my brain exactly the same message.
That’s when I decided to give up my plan of upping the pace to 155 bpm.
My muscles weren’t hurting. It was just the threat of going to hurt a lot that made me aim to keep the pace at 145 bpm.
That was hard. That felt really hard. I know it is silly but I wasn’t expecting to suffer that much.
It took me a huge effort to not stop at kilometer 40 when the route passed in front of our hotel.
By that time everyone was enjoying their second wind and I was just praying for this whole thing to finish.
I didn’t really enjoy the last kilometer. Yes, there were lots of spectators by the side of the road. Some of them even called my name. I was just fearing my legs were going to give up just there. I wanted to cry.
And then, when I had the finish line in sight, I saw the clock at 3h:39m and some seconds.
That was it. I started to cry and upped the pace with the objective to make sure I was under 3h:40m.
If I wanted to be sillier I’d have to train for it.
I cried all the way to the exit and cried again when they gave me that medal. I guess my nickname of “pee man” (three pee stops in the marathon, not happy about that either) should change to “cry man”.
The run in Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/13024264408/
Take care of yourself
Javier Arias González
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