Ooooh me legs !!! Toral 2005

[Riazor Blue]

It’s possible that I may have slept half an hour before the alarm sounded at 5.30 or perhaps it was less. Anyhow we went down for breakfast. There were a couple of other runners there already each of them looking nervous. I hoped they had managed to sleep better than me. Everthing was prepared in the room for me, I had laid out my kit on the spare bed on Saturday night. There was just the small case of using the loo. I tried, oh how I tried. Both Saturday night and there on Sunday morning. After all those carbohydrates, all those calories, but nothing was moving. I made sure that I had some paper with me for the race, I was sure I was going to need it. I tried again just before leaving the hotel at 6.45, no luck. I drove the 3 kilometers to the football ground where the marathon was to finish and started to warm up a little. The start line was a gentle ten minute jog away, nothing before the race, but, as I found out last year, it’s a long old trek after one has run 42 kilometers. After applying copious amounts of warm up cream to the legs and suntan lotion to the shoulders a miracle occurred. I felt the urge, now where was the nearest bar? The bars were near the start line so off I jogged, trying to keep inside what I’d been trying to expel for so long. Simon appeared in the bar for a pre-race photo before I joined the queue for the toilet.

Releived and prepared, we lined up at the start. As Simon has said, there were around 300 of us from all over Spain. In the Spanish rankings Toral comes out in sixth place behind Madrid, Seville, Barcelona, San Sebastian and Valencia, all of which are big affairs, with budgets to match. The day was bright with clear skies, the temperature around 14 degrees. I knew that it would get hotter later on, but for the best part of the race it would be fairly comfortable. Simon and I ran the first kilometer together but got separated round the back of the football ground just as he was asking me if I was usually a slow or fast starter.
During the night I had finally decided on how I was going to run. I wanted to run easily in the first half, my aim was to run the first two ten kilometers in 45 minutes each, then to try and raise the pace slightly for the third and finally to give it everything in the last twelve kilometers. As far as the race goes, I don’t remember too much, the first ten kilometers were all about leaving Toral and waiting to arrive in Cacabelos. The next ten had a couple of hills and a quick piss just before the 15km drinks table. Just after that we started to see a steady trickle of pilgrims as this part of the course followed the Camino de Santiago. I made a point of saying hello to all of them as I passed. I had settled into a rhythm, not really looking at the watch and only occasionally looking at my heart rate. Twenty kilometers came and went, then we passed the half marathon where there was a group of supporters with a banner saying they were proud of all of us. I was struck by the huge statue of a knight in the centre of Ponferrada, although I have been there twice before, visited the castle aswell, I never realised the castle was a Templar fort.
From the half marathon onwards I decided to take my splits every kilometer, which made me miss looking for Simon’s wife and baby at the 25 km mark. I also got overtaken by two runners at this point and what with the drinks table aswell, I must admit that I forgot to look out for them. The next few kilometers I tried to stay close to the runners who had passed me, one attatched himself to a group in front of me while the other disappeared into the distance. I tacked onto this group just as it began to slow, then decided that it was too slow, so off I went again. The guy who overtook me went aswell, and we continued, the two of us at a good pace until around thirty seven kilometers. We were overtaking plenty of runners aswell, with me feeling good and trying to encourage those who we passed. The guy in red stuck to my shoulder and didn’t say a lot. I slowed to take a sports drink at around the 37km mark and immediately got hit by cramp in the left hamstring. The guy in red disappeared as I cruelly noted that he had unusually thin legs. I overcame the cramp and settled back into my rhythm and started to catch up again, then got struck again at 39 km, which forced me to stop and massage both hamstrings to life again. From there to the finish though, I kept telling myself that I was strong and that sub 3.15 was mine.
With the cramps I realised something. The first one occurred more or less when I thought to myself that it was in that spot where I cramped last year. The second one occurred when I thought about what I would do if I got cramps again. And the final one was when I said to myself that old marathon adage ‘pain is temporary, pride is forever’. It was then that I vowed only to think positives, never to mention pain, cramps, sore feet or any such thing until I had finished.
And that was it, even though the last couple of kilometers were uphill, I ploughed on passing a few more runners, trying to catch the guy in red with the thin legs. He beat me in the end, but only by twenty three seconds.

Here are the stats:

10km - 45’41
20km - 45’35 (1h 31’ 16”)
21km - 4’39 (1h 35’ 56”)
30km - 44’48 (2h 16’ 04”)
40km - 46’02 (3h 02’ 06”)
42,195 - 11’04 (3h 13’ 10”)

The negative splits can wait till my next marathon, but hey, I’m so pleased with how this went in the end. I cannot ask for more. Once again, big thanks to you guys on the forum, especially Bierzo Baggie and Sampedro for stopping me from getting too carried away. Big thanks also to José Ramón who’s cautionary tales really made me stop, think and run more wisely than I might have done otherwise.