It’s funny that the inspiration for this post comes from a Youtube ad I just saw. I haven’t watched it all the way through so I don’t know what the good man was trying to sell but his speech was true. There are things you can’t buy with money. There are things you have to earn.
“I’m proud of you” were my wife’s words on the car ride from Eindhoven to Dunkirk where we’re going to spend a few days on holiday with the family. She doesn’t say these words very often and in fact possibly the last time she said them, I probably didn’t have grey hairs in my beard yet. I was driving the car and my body was still full of the happiness hormones that finishing a marathon gives you. I had done it, once again. This time at 44 and in an acceptable time of 3:00:01.
It took 24 more hours
With less leg pain than usual for this kind of reflection. “What if I had run a little faster in the final stretch to speed up by 2 seconds…” I had whatsapp data actually lost three minutes in the last three kilometres. I was close to breaking 2:57:00 with the pace I had up to kilometre 39.
Now 48 hours later, what I already knew is confirmed. From the start of the race I was running at a maximum pace between 4:05-4:09 min/km but without being overwhelmed. I ran the half marathon 30 seconds slower than I had done in a previous race to prepare for this main race in Eindhoven.
It was also a race where
Where I did an experiment. Thanks to intermittent fasting my body was used to running on fat as an energy source. Since this moment is inevitable why recycle my mobile phone? in a marathon, I told myself that it is possible not to run into the wall if your body is optimized to run with fat. It seems that up to kilometer 39 this seemed possible. Then came the man with the hammer, as they call him in Germany, and hit me very hard. The oldest saw me in the final stretch of the last 100
meters towards the finish line and started crying because he had probably never
seen me look so bad before. You can’t buy money to have your two children, aged 8 and 11, hold you in their arms after you have reached the finish line and in the parking lot.
I will return to do better
The recommended amount to ingest in a marathon is tg data about 80g of carbohydrates per hour (provided that you have previously trained with these amounts to be able to absorb it).
Getting back into shape at 44 is something that money cannot buy. I say “at 44” as if it were an advanced age. It is not at all, and even less so for running. I know more about training and nutrition today than when I had my best race in Paris. My best moment is yet to come.