Bertlicher Straßenlauf Marathon

I took advantage of the September Weekend holiday to try a marathon in Herten, Germany. A race description I found suggested the rural three-lap course was susceptible to wind, but the weather forecast for the day was good although perhaps a bit warm. On the starting line I had a look around for likely front-runners, and some fast-looking guy turned up at the very last minute. He headed off at a brisk pace and I didn't particularly try to keep up, although we were well clear of the field after the first quarter of a mile. I didn't feel any leg tightness but I was wary of setting out too fast so dropped off a bit. It was already starting to get warm at 10.30am but there was a cool breeze which I noticed somehow seemed to be a headwind no matter which way the course turned. It wasn't quite as flat as I had been expecting either, and the first half of the lap was broadly uphill. The route consisted entirely of asphalt footpaths or roads, although there was a mile or so where a lot of small potholes had been filled in and it was quite bumpy underfoot.

I completed the first lap in just over 57 minutes, with the leader well out of sight. It was getting warmer all the time but I was still feeling OK and having a drink of water or Gatorade at every other water station, mostly because the combination of sun and wind was making my mouth quite dry. I got to the halfway point in 1:27 but was starting to struggle slightly on account of having tried to stick to a sub-3 hour pace when the conditions were against it. In the second half of the lap I dropped outside 7:00 for a couple of miles, and although I was just inside 1:57 at the end of the lap and theoretically still on course to beat 3 hours, I wasn't looking forward to the last lap at all and might have considered just throwing in the towel if I hadn't been comfortably second.

On the third lap I held it together for a couple of miles before my original goal of 3 hours faded rapidly as I started using the water stations to have a brief walking break while drinking. By now I just wanted it to be over, although in the latter stages I was passing competitors from one of the shorter races, and even lapping the occasional marathon participant, albeit not at a pace which would have suggested I was in second place. I looked back every now and then for anyone catching me, as I thought one of the older runners would have been likely to do, but there was nobody. With second place secure, the last mile went a bit better and I finished in 3:06:25, 17 minutes behind the winner and 3 minutes ahead of third place. As the first M40 to finish I had to wait around for a couple of hours for the presentations, so I spent this time eating cheese rolls and drinking beer. One of the other competitors confirmed my impression of the difficulty of the course when I mentioned how I'd been aiming to finish inside 3 hours.

As always seems to be the case with athletics events in Germany it was superbly organised, with races over 7 different distances, all partly following the same course and starting at different times. Each race was colour-coded and every kilometre for each race was marked in that colour. The marathon had the fewest competitors with 55 finishers, whereas the 5K, 10K and half marathon all had around 150.

Distance was 26.32(!) miles, average pace 7:05/mile. Splits: 6:26, 6:27, 6:37, 6:36, 6:34, 6:50, 6:40, 6:36, 6:35, 6:50, 6:44, 6:55, 6:31, 6:47, 7:01, 7:10, 6:43, 6:49, 7:05, 7:24, 8:32, 8:18, 7:45, 8:11, 8:10, 7:40, 2:15. Weekly total: 42 miles.