General Sport & Fitness

Steve Way: Post Marathon

27 April, 2017
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So Sunday was the first big outing for my new Forerunner 935 as I took to the streets of the capital for the London Marathon. 
I had a number of goals for the race including attempting to retain my title of first Veteran runner from last year (Over 40s), hitting a time that I thought reflected my current fitness (around 2:22-2:23) but also making sure I didn’t completely destroy my legs as I needed to get back into training this week as my main goal for the first half of this year is actually the South African 90K road Ultra “Comrades” on June 4th.
While not a complete disaster I can safely say that my 935 performed significantly better on the day than I did! 

With a total distance recorded of 26.3 miles and my auto-lap buzzer going off at the same time as the official mile markers I knew I could be confident that my pace info on the watch was spot on, definitely the most accurate watch I’ve ever had. Unfortunately, this meant that the watch wasn’t lying when it informed me that I had started to slow down past the half-way point even though I had gone through in my planned time of 71-72min.
My legs were already feeling rather heavy over Tower Bridge which is never a good sign so I knew it would be tough to hold pace for the second half. After going through a tough patch from about 15-20 miles mentally I gave myself a good talking to after being passed by a few runners and also noticing on my 935 that my heart rate had dropped below what I should be able to maintain for the marathon distance.
It’s pleasing to see that in the last few miles I managed to increase both my pace and HR with a reasonably strong finish, clocking a time of 2:26 and 4th Veteran. Not quite what I was after but the important thing is that my legs feel okay now and I’ve already managed to do a 20 mile training run on Tuesday! 

This bodes well for my Comrades training and also my next “training race” which I have lined up, the Wings for Life World Run where I will be competing in the California race in just 10 days time being chased by a car!