Thursday evening we left Vienna for a long and active weekend in Vorarlberg as on Sunday the Sparkasse Marathon took place which by now has become a traditional event for Markus run the half-marathon distance. Anna, Lini & Peter visited the Laendle as well (arriving Friday afternoon) even though Peter decided last minute to not take the challenge of the 21,0975 km race as he was suffering from a cold and therefore they used the days to visit Peter's sister in Vaduz, some friends and to watch the race. While it was raining when we arrived Friday night the weather improved throughout Friday and peaked in a gorgeous early spring weekend with sunshine and more than 20 degrees.
Ready to take on the challenge.
Markus' birthday on Saturday was declared a "no-celebration-day" in order to not jeopardize the performance on Sunday and so it was an easy going day on which Markus just picked up his number in Lindau, we had a walk through Lindau together with Sandra & Flo and in the evening had a big portion of pasta prepared by Heidi. Sunday morning the sky was blue and cloudless and when Markus boarded the ship in Bregenz to reach the start area in Lindau it was already quite warm. By the time the race was started - at exactly 11:11 by both the mayor of Lindau and Marathon due to the celebrations "2500 years of marathon" - the temperature in the sun has already reached more than 20 degrees again.
Jakob was the first one to congratulate - and took the medal.
Given the warm weather and the fact that Markus' preparations were not ideal - even though he had loads of time during his gardening leave he did not stick to his training plan but rather did odd training runs with a maximum length of 75 minutes - he started into the race rather slow and tried to keep the pace for a finishing time of 1:45 minutes. After km 11 the fact that there were no long runs in the preparations he had to reduce his pace in order to make it to the finishing line and was only able to speed up again for the last three kilometers of the race. In the end he reached the finish in the Casino Stadium Bregenz after 1:49:23 which left him not surprised but definitely a bit frustrated. The obvious lesson from that is: No pain - No gain. Clearly there is a lot to make up for next year! Irrespective of the finishing time during the afternoon and evening Markus' birthday was celebrated with banana & yoghurt/blueberry cakes and Heidi's delicious Kaesepaetzle before falling dead tired into bed.
Jakob, Kerstin & Markus
No comments:
Post a Comment