Yet another turbulent week on the stock markets in which everyone focused on the ONE event on Friday: the second voting in the US congress on the bailout package. The expectation was that the bill will be passed this time and so the trading session did start off positively. Unfortunately market participant's reaction to the positive voting was a classic: as the structure and amount of the 700bn USD package was seen as not sufficient the markets sold off. The news on Saturday, that the support package for Hypo Real Estate collapsed as up to 100bn EUR are needed spilled some oil into the fire burning these days on equity markets. It’s probably best to keep your cash at home under your pillow!
Friday night, while the congress casted its votes we were driving to Vorarlberg where Markus was participating in the Sparkasse Marathon over the half-marathon distance. The cold temperatures paired with rain on Saturday were scary, but the weather forecast for Sunday was somewhat better. Especially the news that it’s supposed to be dry was heard with joy.
Sunday morning the weather was just perfect: crispy cold in morning, but no cloud and sunshine. After breakfast at Sandra and Flo's we boarded the MS Vorarlberg which brought us to Lindau, where the start of the run was. After warm-up routine and additional motivation with the right play list on Markus' iPod the run was started at 11:11 with ca 18 degrees in the sun and 9 degrees in the shadow.
Friday night, while the congress casted its votes we were driving to Vorarlberg where Markus was participating in the Sparkasse Marathon over the half-marathon distance. The cold temperatures paired with rain on Saturday were scary, but the weather forecast for Sunday was somewhat better. Especially the news that it’s supposed to be dry was heard with joy.
Sunday morning the weather was just perfect: crispy cold in morning, but no cloud and sunshine. After breakfast at Sandra and Flo's we boarded the MS Vorarlberg which brought us to Lindau, where the start of the run was. After warm-up routine and additional motivation with the right play list on Markus' iPod the run was started at 11:11 with ca 18 degrees in the sun and 9 degrees in the shadow.
Warm-up is key. The right music for it helpful
Markus, who had an "official" target of 1:45 for his race and was hoping for a time below 1:40, started off moderately with ca 4'15/km over the first few kilometers. After ca. 15 minutes he started though to feel horrible stitches and he had to slow down to an avg. 5'10/km, but the pain was persistent. When Kerstin saw him at km 7 Markus looked like not making it very far and indeed he was considering to turn in at the 1/4-marathon.
Along the pipeline he got the pain under control, managed to speed up again and the 21,0975 km were back in play! What followed was in all of his past half marathons unseen: he made up time vs. his target in the second half of the race, could mark strong last 3kms and reached the finishing line as 31st in his category and as 288th man after 1:39:30. This is ca. 1,5 minutes slower than his personal best (1:38:10 set in October 2004), but within the time he hoped for and clearly good considering the problems at the beginning!
It was a "happy finish". Different to a Thai massage though.
As a first reaction Markus was happy with seeing the finishing line and the time, but pretty soon also some annoyance about the problems in the first third of the race came up. The positive takeaway is clearly the fact that the speed in the second half was kept stable at ca 4'45/km and that Markus was running with an average heart rate of 178 bpm rather than ca 185 in previous races what usually resulted in much slower times towards the finish.
As we have taken Monday off we are planning a small late birthday dinner with Sandra, Flo and Werner and tomorrow morning we are driving back to Vienna.
Kerstin & Markus
2 comments:
Average heart rate 178. Du bist ein Selbstmörder!!!!!
klingt schlimmer als es war. bin diesmal nicht blau gelaufen und haette durchaus noch einige km laufen koennen. in den rennen avor war das nicht immer der fall. selbst muskelkater ist keiner zu verspueren.
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