Amsterdam marathon
October 28th, 2007 by Nikola Tosic
Sorry I was away a bit from TriCape.com. I spent a week in Holland and my main reason for this visit was the Amsterdam marathon.
I started a new season maybe some seven weeks ago. I have been only running and cycling just a bit to maintain the feeling. My coach suggests that it is always good to run a marathon or a similar length running race very early in the season. For this year I wanted to do Amsterdam marathon with my running club team from Belgrade, Serbia.
Seven of us met in Amsterdam. My club, Hermes, has members all over the place, so we assembled a team for this race from Germany, Sweden, Finland and Serbia. Eleven of us were supposed to run it but only seven made it due to injuries and job obligations.
It was super fun to meet up with all the team mates and friends in Amsterdam. I also have a lot of art friends in Holland (I also do some art here and there) so I used a chance to connect my two lives: endurance sports and contemporary art. It is a strange mix but people got along.
My goal for the marathon was sub 2:50. I only had few weeks of specific training for a marathon and on top of that I started experiencing the same injury I had just before Ironman UK - a strange pain in my left knee that sometimes would be so severe it would completely prevent me from running. Due to this injury I missed two key workouts which lowered my chances for a good results even more. I knew I am able to run around 2:48 but with little training and the injury anything could happen. I ran a 1:18 half marathon without tapering few weeks before and it felt easy.
My knee was in annoying pain every time I would run during the week before the Amsterdam marathon. I felt it constantly. There is something about these stupid injuries that whenever there is an important race they pop up and get more intense. Maybe it is psychological. I do not know. I do know that I was sure I did not want to come to Amsterdam so I would quit the marathon after few kilometres. I was starting o be desperate. I even started praying: Please God, let me finish this race. Let me just do it properly. Allow me to do my best.
My coach also instructed me not to run it all out. He did not want me to recover for weeks after. He wanted me to run it well but not super hard. I needed to be able to train as soon as possible after the marathon, not take several weeks for recovery. This was a bit tricky for me. How do I run well but not over do it. I am the guy who runs sub 6 min on first 2 km on an 8 km race only to finish it off with 3:40. I start my Ironman runs with 80-85% effort and than I just hope that I do not crash until 21st km. Than when I pass the half of the run I relax and push a bit more as if the last 21 km is a walk in the park. I do not know how to hold it down. I am stupid and I need to learn it.
So I had the lack of training, the injury and the whole easy / not easy thing in my head. Most annoying issue was the injury. I was mentally prepared that if it starts hurting I will just have to get over it. I will have to beat the pain and run through it. I was already saying to my team-mates that this marathon will be like a boxing match for me.
As I warmed up for the marathon I felt my knee acting up. I was slightly feeling the beginning of the pain. This feeling was so familiar and I knew it should be followed by a much more intense pain by which I would be forced to stop. I did not even start my race and I was already worrying about this so much. I just wanted to be able to finish the race.
I felt like a disabled person. I even thought about people who are challenged. As silly as it sounds I could identify to them on some level. One of our team-mates is diabetic so this reminded me of him. He will never be able to really give it all his got. There is always something else he has to think about, something that holds him back.
Marathon was super crowded. The first kilometre was so crowded I almost jogged the first few hundred metres. I passed it in 4:20. Next one I sped up to around 3:50 and kept it at that speed for a while. All the time my knee was acting up and I did not even think about the race. All I thought about was the knee. Every step I took I was focusing on how it felt. Every turn and every person I passed I had to be careful. It was super annoying. I was so focused on it that it isolated me so much from the whole atmosphere.
At some point, around 15th kilometre it stopped. The intense pain never came and the teaser pain was gone. Something happened. I was so happy. As if I was cured from a terminal disease. I was free to run properly. I could run without thinking about each step I made. And I was still doing sub 4:00 min/km pace.
From around 19th km we turned into the wind and I was smart enough to try my lack and escape the group I was with. Probably the stupidest thing ever but I just did not enjoy running behind people. I wanted to be in the front. I got few meters ahead and realized what a super stupid mistake I made. Wind was very strong. I had to go much harder just to keep the pace at around 4:05 min/km. Later on the video I realized I was only few metres ahead of the group and that the whole move was a disaster.
I was doing this until 24th km when suddenly and very swiftly the knee pain got back and was super intense. Fuck! I stopped running. I was able to do some strange form of movement which wasn’t actually running but allowed me to move forward. I was bending under the pain. Than I did the whole Rocky routine saying to myself I will beat this. It hurt really bad for few seconds, it felt more like a week, but it went away. I was again free from it. Lots of people passed me. I lost some time. But it came, I beat it, and now I was running again. That kilometre felt very slow but I still did 4:11. Next two I did sub 4:00 min/km.
After that I had no problems with the knee. However I had problems with my arrogance. I completely underestimated the race. After three Ironman and one ultra-marathon race marathon seamed like a walk in the park. So I did not really think too hard about my nutrition. I decided to eat two gels. The first one I took too early and second one too late. I should have had at least three, optimally four gels. I was… I am an idiot. I did not get enough energy in.
I was always able to finish strong. No matter if it is a 10 or 5 hour race. I always did well with energy and ate properly which allowed me to finish all my races with some dignity. This time was different. Soon after 30th km my legs got heavy. I was out of fuel. At 35 km I was hoping to speed up but it was wishful thinking. I was finished and annoyed by my lack of nutrition planning. How could I underestimate such a simple race!
Instead of having the usual 3 km finish I was going slower and slower. And the race course got even tougher and tougher. More hills, more curves. I was struggling to keep up with the group I wanted to finish with. I was doing between 4:05 and 4:10. A disaster! I would rather have run a slower marathon but with a finish instead of an OK time but with such pathetic last 10 km.
Last two kilometres were so hard. Every hundred metres was a challenge. I finished in 2 hours 51 minutes 3 seconds. This marathon was harder than any Ironman I have done. I was not used to the speed of it because I train to run slower in Ironman races, I had the whole knee pain thing distracting me for the first 25 kilometres, and I made a huge mistake with nutrition so I ended up empty. I could have easily done sub 2:50 but I missed it.
Anyway, I learned a lot from the race. It was a good race to work on my modesty. To realize that no matter how much I train I have to watch out for details. Even a smallest stupidest little detail can cost me a lot.
I had a great time in Amsterdam and everybody from my team enjoyed it very much. Everybody asked for more - they all want to run more next year which makes me so happy. Managing a running club in Serbia is like selling hot air in Sahara. Serbs by nature are into team sports and hate to work hard and running is everything they do not like, so it makes me super happy that we were able to make this team and do the race.
Also Amsterdam marathon deserves it. It is a very good race. I also saw a lot of South Africans and am always amazed to see them travelling all over the world for races. I think South Africans are one of the most dedicated nations to endurance sports and this is one of the reasons why I love spending time there. It is so inspirational.
For those of you who are considering to do this race go for it. It is well organized and it is also a nice holiday. Make sure to do the pasta party: it was like a luxurious restaurant and there were only 20 or so people there - the best pasta party ever. Race itself can be a bit cold and windy and lots of turns and very small hills. It is not a super fast course as many might think. It is hard to keep your rhythm with all the turns and the crowd.
If you are running slower than three hours, especially if you are around 4 hours, you will run in a huge crowd all the time. Everybody from my team ran several minutes slower than projected and I am guessing this is because they were always surrounded by a lot of people and every turn is a stressful situation when you can step on someone and fall.
For the finish my average heart rate was 181 bpm!
You can see the race videos and photos here (my bib is 257). You can see my photos here.
