This race didn’t quite go to plan.
The marathon weekend logistics were great, the expo was great (we went on the Friday as we always do; you don’t want to be queueing for hours among the Saturday crowds), the training block had been… mostly okay. I had to cut a few long runs short and change a lot of things around with fuelling plans in the fairly late stages due to nausea causing issues at the GNR, but it had gone better than my Yorkshire block last year. Or so I felt, anyway.
I was attempting sub-4 again, but anything faster than my PB (4:16:30) would have been… acceptable.
Race morning was straightforward. Very early start for an early starting time, but I was fine with that – I prefer races to start earlier than later. It was a bit of a pain to get to our wave’s baggage area, but we were settled in the start pen in plenty of time. I left Geth at the front of the wave and headed to the back to find the four-hour pacers.
Once we got going, I stuck with the pacers (as planned) for the first half; they were going a bit too fast but it was comfortable-ish. Nevertheless this may have contributed to fatigue at halfway.
The first half felt like it flew by, but it was really congested, especially in our large pace group. The uneven ground (features of Amsterdam roads include tram lines and uncovered neat holes about half a foot across – and I’m really not sure of the reason for the latter!) didn’t help, and at least one person went flying fairly early. It was quite a bit of extra effort to avoid other runners. I didn’t really notice the landmarks as I was focusing so hard on the pacers’ flags and trying not to fall too far behind (which again was tough due to the congestion).
There were lots of runners asking/commenting about the Town Moor and/or Newcastle due to my Benchie club vest! Even spoke to a guy who turned out to know our club captain Ed 😀
I really started noticing the aforementioned fatigue at about ten miles. Due to this, I had to drop the pace a little as I approached the halfway point. I had already given up on sticking with the pacers, as they really did seem to be intent on keeping up the slightly-too-fast pace (most of my splits were registering on my watch as about 8:30 minute miles while I was running with them). I eventually went through the halfway point in bang on 2 hours and by that time they were completely out of sight.
I could probably have toughed the rest of the race out for somewhere between 4:10 and 4:15 if not for the hideous nausea that has been a feature of pretty much all my long pace efforts this year. Every kind of fuel makes me feel sick (or is otherwise unusable/problematic) on fast long races. Every single thing I’ve tried. And given that you can’t do fast long races without mid-run fuelling, this is a significant problem that needs a lot of work and thought. I’ll be expanding on this in the next blog post.
By about 15 miles in, running at any pace for more than 0.2 of a mile at a time made me want to collapse against the nearest tree and vomit up the entirety of my internal organs, so walking it was. I channelled my friend and clubmate Clare and powerwalked as fast as I could, with occasional run breaks when I could stand it. This made me feel a lot better nausea-wise, though I could have done without all the supporters constantly telling me to start running again.
My memory of the race throughout this section is honestly very blurry and fuzzy. Strangely, even though I had slowed significantly due to the walking, the miles seemed to be ticking by faster than ever, and it felt like the race flew by quicker than my two faster marathons in 2024. I remember the last few miles of the Walt Disney World Marathon feeling similar even though that was very slow, so maybe it’s just what happens when focusing on run-walk intervals.
Finish line crossed at 4:45:29. I pulled off an epic sprint finish with bags of energy left, so I know I did have a lot faster in me. Not my day though.
In hindsight the warning signs were there in training. I’ll be switching to shorter stuff for a while but this one’s given me a lot to think about.
I usually do a debrief at the end of race recap blogs, but there’s a lot that needs to shift with my running in general so I’ll put all of those thoughts in a separate post.