Medio Maraton de Madrid - Race report

March 29th was the half-marathon in Madrid that I got from Marius for Christmas. It was my fourth half-marathon and I trained a solid 15 weeks to earn a new personal record. Prior to this race, my personal record was 1:47, set in Lisbon in March 2013...I was around 30 seconds shy last year when I ran in Bergen coming in at 1:48 - I forgot the exact seconds.

We had a few days in Madrid before the race, but I will write about those later when I can get the pictures from Marius' camera. The course looped the northern part of the city and finished in a very nice park. There were nearly 17,000 runners, and I definitely blended in with the crowd. Marius was much easier to spot with his blond hair. Even though I wore my American flag shorts, there were so many people that it would have been difficult for Marius to spot me through the crowd. So I encouraged him to do his workout and keep an eye out for me at 10:45am. 

The course was not flat, like I had thought it would be. Rather, it rolled up and down through the city. I had my Garmin clocking my time and I managed to maintain a steady pace that was significantly faster than the pace I ran in Lisbon, Portugal in 2013. The Madrid half was probably the first half marathon where I was actually bored during the run. There was no street-side entertainment like at the other races and fans only lined the remaining three kilometers.

Map and splits 1-13 (note it is minutes per km)

Splits for km 10-21.1

When I saw Marius at the 19th km marker I was worn out. It was the steepest incline of the race and I was really losing my speed having maintained such a good pace for most of the race. He said I still looked happy, but it's easy to see in the pictures from the 20th km that I was really worn out! My Garmin GPS watch beeped at 21.1 km and I stopped it to mark exactly the distance of a half-marathon. The Garmin website acknowledged it and gave me a new personal best of 1:41:48! However, that was not the same as the course. So I tried to maintain a good speed to cross the finish in record time. 

Official time 1:46, chip time 1:42....any of those numbers is a personal best. I am one very happy runner!!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Smalahove

Image
Many Norwegian traditions are distinctly regional. Even recipes are variable by region to go along with dialects that can be different by town separated by just 50 kilometers. This tradition, that both Marius and I were new to trying, was from a town just about an hour and a half east of Bergen called Voss....smalahove, or half of a sheep's head that is cooked in a broth for several hours. Smalahove comes from two Norwegian words: smale = sheep, and hove = head. It is served before Christmas with potatoes, mashed rutabaga, and red cabbage. Many of my friends were telling me that the cheek is supposed to be the best part, and others were saying that they wouldn't dare eat it. So I can now say that I have done something that many other Norwegians haven't dared try. I actually really enjoyed it! It had a texture like corned beef and had a very nice flavor. Marius went as far as to try the tongue, and thought that eating the eye was a normal thing, so tried that as well...bu...
Read more

In case you missed it, I moved back to Bergen

Image
But only temporarily, as of yet. In the beginning of the month I took the train from Oslo to Bergen. It was a beautiful trip cross-country ascending to over 1000m above sea level and back down again. My friend Knut said that I could stay at his place until an apartment was available to rent. I picked up the key from his mom, dropped off my things, and went back downtown to go to my Norwegian course. He was out of town for the week for work, and my first day of work was not until the following Monday. So I used the next five days reacquainting myself with Bergen....mainly by running around my old neighborhood. On Monday (Nov 10) I started my new (tempoary) part time job at UniResarch Sars International Centre for Marine Molecular Biology...UniSars for short. Technically I am called a "research technician", but I'm more like a glorified dishwasher at the moment. I made sure to tell the researchers that I am more than capable to help them if they need an extra pa...
Read more

FIFA 2010 South Africa

Image
FIFA 2010 kicked off on June 11 and today, New Zealand will today make a return to the world’s greatest football stage exactly 28 years to the day since their FIFA World Cup debut. The All Whites will take on Slovakia at 11PM (New Zealand time). It is hard to say whether it will be a good game or not; however, the fact that NZ is in the world cup for the first time in so long is enough of a reason to stay up so late. Saturday morning was the big USA vs. England match. The Americans are so happy with a tie that the New York Post had this as its front page: The time difference makes it a bit hard to keep up with seeing the games, but it's always fun to rub in the fact that the British tied the US in their first World Cup game this year to some British friends. Next exam is Saturday for Invertebrate Diversity. And only 20 days to go til Thailand!!
Read more