Piotr Woloszyn

The autumn fairy tale continues. My last start on Sunday in the Royal Parks half marathon was a total success. I was planning to take it easy which certainly wasn’t the case as I pushed hard enough to take a solid bite out of my half marathon PB. I finished in 1h 42m 18s that is a time I hasn’t even dreamed about as it is 16min faster than my result from Royal Parks Half 2008, last year and 5min faster than in Lisbon in March this year.

The weather was I could say perfect for running. I also started in the green, second wave of runners (1h30m-1h45min). Combination of those two factors made it a nice task to control the race and keep my target pace of 4m55s/km, here and there saving couple of seconds per kilometer. As people around me were as fast or faster than me there was no problem with overtaking in the crowd, water was served in bottles (!) so the waste of time was negligible.

It is one of those races I will try doing every year, really enjoyable in Hyde Park were I do my longer training runs anyway, feels like the home race. Plus I am really starting to like half marathon distance.

Unfortunately I am carrying a knee injury now I am not sure if I can recover before the Frankfurt Marathon on Sunday next week. Chances are 50/50, I couldn’t be able do it today for sure.

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All that long training paid off. I finished the race within my target time and now have a new Personal Best of 3h 48min 02 sec. The run itself was probably the most demanding and difficult from all my starts due to unusual temperature for Germany this time of the year: 26C. The last kilometers were a real struggle (have a look at some photos, you will see it) plus I had to spend much more time on the water stations to replenish fluids. All in all the Berlin Marathon is an amazing sport venue and Berliners know how to support very well. Finish at the Brandenburg Gate is worth the pain.

My split times:

5 km - 00:27:22
10 km - 00:54:27
15 km - 01:20:42
20 km - 01:46:26
half - 01:52:07
25 km - 02:12:59
30 km - 02:40:23
35 km - 03:07:50
40 km - 03:36:35

place (M/W)     9333
place (ag)      1292
place (total)   10113
time total (brutto)     04:00:12
time total (netto)      03:48:02

Apropos my race strategy I intended to keep 5m10s/km for first 32 km then allow a fade of 35s. I’ve struggled to keep the target pace. First of all as I already mentioned it was very hot and having trained in London I am not used to that, much prefer to run in 10C-20C and even during a rain. Second: it was very, very packed, I overtook almost 1000 people during the run which costs time (next time I will try to start from earlier pen, this time it was F). Additionally drinks are served in plastic cups without a lid, almost impossible to drink and run so the time spent at water stations easily doubles. As result I was always below the 5m10s/km and had to make much bigger effort to keep the on-target pace by not allowing myself that sweet 35sec fade in last stages. I did slow down but less than planned and less than I would like to. At the end I got to the finish line 58sec faster than planned. It cost me a lot though.

Tomorrow I participating in the Royal Parks Half Marathon in London. I will try to take it easy and treat it as a training run as in 2 weeks I am flying to Frankfurt where with my friend we will try to hack the marathon PB again.

Other running related awesome news is that I got a place in the London Marathon 2010 through my 4th ballot. Still can’t believe it!

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