Being so close to the starting area I was in no rush in the morning – I set the alarm to 08:00 so I could faff about at my leisure before leaving. I woke halfway up 20-30 minutes before the alarm went off and all I registered was what sounded like torrential rain coming down outside. What a day for a run! I nodded off again, and when the alarm did go off the rain had mostly quieted down and not long after completely ended.
Half an hour before start I left the hotel and joined the flow of people going to the starting area where I quickly found the section where my wave was located (which was pretty easy as it turned out it was at the end of the street where my hotel was located). I positioned myself in the middle of the group and shortly before start the 1:45 pacer moved up towards the front – and then he left and ended up in the rear of the 1:30-1:45 group with the 1:30 pacer in the front. As it wasn’t possible to move around in the now gathered crowd of runners I decided to run without a pacer – and if the 1:45’er passed me I’d hook up onto him and have him pull me home.
Wheelchair racers where sent off at 09:50 followed by elite and sub-1:30’ers at 10:00, and as they were leaving the starting area we were moved up towards the starting line and at 10:04 we were let go.
While waiting at the starting line it was getting obvious that the risk of rain was rapidly decreasing as the cloud cover was lightening and the sun was coming out. While waiting we were in the shade but somewhere between 2 and 3 km we took a 90 degree turn putting us straight towards the sun which meant that with all the water on the ground from the morning’s rain and the rapid increase in temperature the humidity skyrocketed. Not quite the start I had been hoping for. Throughout the race I overheard multiple locals comment on the weather noting that the current situation was far from what they had expected.
Around the half-way point it became a common sight to see people hand out either Haribo or Bassett winegums or Turkish delights. That was great! It was also around that time where runners finally had been spread out enough that it wasn’t uncomfortably congested anymore. It wasn’t because there were more runners than at similar runs, the streets were just quite narrow for the entire course so while they were quite nice it was a bit impractical with this many people gathered all at once.
We circled south from the castle past and across Cardiff Bay over the Cardiff Bay bridge, which turned out to be significantly flatter than I had expected. From there we went through the center of the city and further north before doing a (roughly) 180 turn and returned to the center and the finish line behind the castle. While there weren’t spectators everywhere, where they were they were very supportive.
Crossing the finish line you were handed your medal, (very pink) finisher t-shirt and various drinks and fruits. I managed to find my way through the finishing area and a short walk later I had returned to my hotel. Extra bonus: the receptionist noted that I was the first runner staying at the hotel to finish. Yay?
I crossed the finish line in 1:45:11, right above my goal, but without a pacer I was pretty happy with the result. Also considering the Chicago marathon next weekend I tried not to push myself (too) hard. I came in as 1718 out of 12.783 overall (top 13,44%), 1528 out of 7236 men (top 21,12%) and 265 out of 956 M40 (top 27,72%). So relatively speaking it was a very nice result which I am pretty happy about. You had to get to M75+ or F60 to find a group winner who was slower than me!
Returning to the hotel I had a much needed shower and relaxed the rest of the day. I left again around 17:00 and walked around for maybe an hour before I found a place for dinner – a burger place named Fat Hippo seemed right up my alley.
Returning to the hotel – again – before 20:00 I indeed felt like a fat hippo and did absolutely nothing productive the rest of the evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment