Marathon #1 (Barcelona)

So my first marathon has been successfully completed!

Today I ran the Barcelona Marathon in 5 hours 5 minutes. My knees and quads are in absolute agony right now, but the sense of achievement is astonishing. To be honest, considering how poor and interrupted my preparation was I am happy that I just managed to finish it. Next time I will aim to substantially improve my time and hopefully completely avoid having to walk.

I ran it with my friend Erik from eriksmarathon and 2 of his friends. The first half marathon 3 of us basically stuck together, which was nice as we got to see the Nou Camp and the Sagrada Família together, but the pace we were running wasn't exactly ideal for my race strategy and I ended up dropping back just before the half was completed and couldn't catch up either.

The last 10k was very tough, as my knees were burning, so I had to walk at least half of the time of that distance.Given that the most I had trained was 19 miles (31k) and that was intervals with walking and running I am pretty pleased with that I could complete it, and hope that the next one goes a lot smoother on the knees!

The pic at the top is the 4 of us at the finish line showing off our medals and our pecs, below is a closeup of the medal.

It was a good day so far, but now I need to leave and have a celebratory beer and stuff! :)

A full blog about Barcelona will appear soon.

Viel Spaß homies!