Ich bin ein Hamburger

[El Gordo]

It's a long story, as marathons always are. But just the basics...

A classic marathon of two halfs. Up to 23km everything was perfect. My target splits of 6:45 per km were barely more than 10 seconds out on any km right up till then.

Then bang, something happened. I stopped running. I'll explain more in my report which will appear in a few days, when I get back, but the long and the short of it is that I had a terrible, and painful, second half. Was this the dreaded wall? I don't know. My hips sort of seized up and I could barely move for a while. Bizarre.

The bad new is that I missed my 5 hour target - again. The good news is that I'm pretty certain that I got a PB, beating my Chicago time by probably about 6 mins in the end. My watch says 5-09 but I stopped for a quick stretch at one point and my watch stopped. So probably 5-10 or so.

Hey, stuff happens, as Mr Rumsfeld reminded us. I'm not a glass-half-empty sort of chap, so I'm going to be pleased with the PB rather than gloomy about the missed target.

Talking about glasses half full, I think it'sh time I shampled shome German beer.

Cheers!

Andy