What a race! New WR, new PR, fantastic race course! I was all set for a sub 3:50' finish (that was my time goal for this morning's race) that I was not able to pull, but it was an awesome race nevertheless. Temperatures were just about perfect between 15-22C with a shining sun that didn't affect racers performances and just made the course on the German capital to be even more attractive and beautiful.

First water stop on km 5 and second water stop only on km 10 forced me to carry a small bottle of water when the race started. When I passed through the second water stop, I knew I could ditch the water bottle but for some reason I got emotionally attached to "her" and carried her the entire race. I was even calling her my "Mr. Wilson" even though it was a bottle of local "Ja" water. :-) It was kind of a good idea because it allowed me to skip a few water stops, knowing that I had enough water in Mr. Wilson to reach the next stop. Also, those hard plastic cups are really hard to drink from while running and refilling Mr. Wilson instead of drinking directly from the cups also saved me a couple of seconds on water stops.

My race plan was to go "nice and easy", punching even splits the entire race at around 5'27" per km, what would lead me to a sub-3:50' finish. Set the Garmin Virtual Partner at exactly 5'27" per km and raced the Virtual Partner until km 35 when my legs started to fail. As I was following the plan running even splits around my goal pace, I really didn't have enough time buffer to allow 7 slower laps and still make it under 3:50'. Finishing a marathon is never an easy task and we all know we have to respect the distance. I did, but my legs just were not able to keep it up the entire 42.2k.

Managed to run the last two kilometers under the target pace, but then it was already too late. Finished it in 3:54'15" (official result) and set a new PR for the marathon. Very happy with the result and very happy I was able to stick to the plan most of the time. Lessons learned, now it's time to settle down for a little while and plan for another marathon in 2012. Any suggestions? :-)

Hope you all had excellent running/racing weekends!