Copenhagen - nice city, nice marathon

Last week Chantal and I were a weekend in Copenhagen; for the city but also for the marathon. Together with friend Marcel, I went there on Thursday - we took our bikes to discover the city. Chantal came with a colleague on Saturday and did some site seeing by bike as well (we're Dutch so we love to cycle!). The city is really beautiful and the Danish people are nice and relaxed. And just like most of the tourists, we saw the little mermaid, the new harbour, the castle, Kristiania, etc. On Saturday evening we would meet each other at the Meatpacking District; there we had a nice dinner, some beers and went for a stroll to get ice cream. It was a lovely evening...

But hey, there was also a marathon we wanted to run! That evening Chantal and I decided to run together - we're supposed to run those eight days in the TAR together.
Sunday morning - hardly any race jitters. Chantal was relaxed because she would run with me (I'm the slower one of our team). I was relaxed because I wanted to race fast - hmm not true, I was relaxed because all the participants were relaxed. Really amazing atmosphere at the start, everybody nice and friendly, nobody pushy or what ever. Chantal and I took our places close to the balloons/pacers of 3:30hrs. That is fast for me, but I felt good and I gained some confidence during the trail the week before.

 

The temp was nice, there were some clouds in the sky, sometimes a little bit of sun (let's say sunny intervals) and some rain would come. Ideal wheater to run a marathon! So off we went, the first KMs just a little under 5mins and after the 20KMs a bit above. At 25KMs I shouted to Chantal to run alone further - I would stop. My knee was hurting. Chantal looked back and was disappointed, but understood that my knee was more important than a nice finish time. So she ran further and I started to walk a little. My knee is a known problem - it doesn't like running on flat, paved track for a long distance... It started to rain a little, so I started to run again because I didn't want to cool down. My knee was still able to run at a decent speed, so I went on to 30KMs. At that point I was far away from the finish, so I decided to run/walk further on. I watched the time go by and a lot of participants go by.. I decided that if I could finish within the 4 hrs, I would try that. And even though I had to limp the last few KMs I just made it in time. Chantal ran a very decent 3:34:04. And yes, we were happy with it. I knew there was a risk that my knee wouldn't hold. And next time we try to stick together...