My first Marathon

6 o'clock in the morning, I got up and ate my usual breakfast plus an energy bar and drank a lot of water. Then I walked to the train station, got on the train and after a 15 minute ride I was in Fürth. Now one tip is to run a little before the start. Since I was so nervous I thought my body is already fully pumped up and every 10min I had to go for pi.. so I left out the warming up. Well we got on the starting line and I checked my pules: 230... OK, I was nervous but I was not dead... yet. Then I realised I was not the only one having a pulse watch on which interfered with mine and so I took my pulse the old fashion way.
I got in line were it said 3:30h, since I had my injury and I still was wearing a bandage - I was kind of scared that in the middle of the Marathon my injury will be back.
Bang, it started and I was feeling great. Having hundreds of people around you just pushes you. Still wanting to get the best performance out of me, I aimed for a 4:45min run, but there was no marking to be found which would give the distance. So I guessed and thought I was in the 4:45min range and still feeling great - I really wanted to go faster but having in mind that this is just the easy part I took it easy.
The big crowd got very small after passing one runner after the other. Quite late after 45min I saw the first marking: 10km. What? I had a pace of 4:30min and it was still going great, so I kept it up, but I still had to pull myself together not to got any faster.
After 24km I took up some speed, since everything was going great. Now at 30km the chap with the hammer was knocking at the door, but as you can see in the picture taken at that point all was going well. Well It soon got worse, I was not in a crowd of runners anymore and the audience got sparse - well they can not cover 42,195 km. At 35km it got hard, my muscle were aching, my legs just would not move so easily anymore. Now this is the part I knew from my test runs but I was now running much faster than at those runs, about 1min faster and I had to keep it up. I lost little my pace but kept moving and after running in the country side we got back into the city were the crowds were. This gave me another reason to keep it up. There was no other runner in sight just the crowd and me - I kept going. It went on for ages. One bend after the other, like going in circles no straight line. The distance marking were no were to be found. The finish line had to be here somewhere. Then I heard the crowd and went for it. There was the goal and I made it... what a great day. This is why I did all the training and it was the right thing to do, what a feeling, what a run... what pain, what hunger. Yeah, the pain did not leave and I needed something to eat. I went to by bag and gorge down an energy bar and drank water. Nothing could get that smile of my face, so bloody happy.

Well to keep it short: I took the train back and went home from the train station. This 20min walk was great, the pain in my muscle suddenly disappeared.

Oh yeah, I got in as 47th in a 3:12:02 (netto: 3:11:32) time.