The Marathon is officially 3 days and a handful of hours away. Preparation is now over, and I’m taking it easy to recover energy for the big day.
The Wall Link to heading
A month ago, I did my longest training run ahead of the race: 36 km, starting at 5 in the morning. Three hours and forty minutes of athletic endeavor and an excellent test run.
My main curiosity was to test the infamous marathon wall. It seems to be a shared experience among all runners — a sensation of complete physical and mental collapse, a feeling of exhaustion that sometimes leads you to abandon the race. It normally manifests at the 30th kilometer of the race, so I was very attentive to picking up on the various sensations in order to keep them under control.
The only sensation worth noting was a pain in my right side, about halfway up my chest, the origin of which is still unknown to me. It lasted for a few kilometers and then disappeared completely.
From the thirtieth kilometer onward, I felt great tiredness, but nothing different from what I felt the first times I tackled 21 km — maybe even to a lesser degree.
A fact worth noting, in my opinion, emerges from heart rate monitoring: around the thirtieth kilometer, it shot up toward the maximum and stayed around 190 bpm for a while, though it then seemed to take a downward trend.
Maybe it’s due to the two breaks being too close together, or maybe this is indeed the fabled wall. I think maintaining such a heart rate for another 6 km would be intolerable, so we can only hope for the best.
The Race Link to heading
Contrary to the initial announcements, the race start has been moved from 5 to 7 in the morning. This means the 4 hours will be run mostly under the sun. On top of that, the weather forecast predicts rain for the two days before the race, so at best we’ll have muggy heat and at worst, rain.
I’m counting on the refreshment stations every 5 kilometers to solve most of the problems.