Did the Barcelona Marathon yesterday, and managed to finish it in 3:24:53. Not a fast time by any means, but I managed to be three minutes faster than last year. The three weeks hiatus in December and the shin pain of the last weeks put a dent on my confidence so I'm really happy about the result.
I'm proud that I could do the second half faster (1:41:39) than the first one (1:43:15), considering the last 2Km are done on an uphill street (Avinguda del Paral·lel) which is infamous among people that run the marathon.
The fueling strategy also seemed to work pretty well: I took one gel before leaving, one 5 minutes before race start, one at minute 40 and then one every 30 minutes (to take the last gel a bit before Paral·lel). Although I brought my own, I've really have to commend the organization here on the fueling stations: water every 2.5Km after the 5th, fruit on the 15, 20, 25, 30, 32.5, 35, 38, 40 Km and gels on the 22.5, 30 and 35 points. You can pretty much run it without carrying anything if you so choose.
The only negative experience I had this year is when a runner tripped me up when he moved to the side to greet some of the people watching, causing me to fall. Luckily I have some experience in falling into a roll and rolling into a run so it wasn't that nasty of a fall, but it could have ended badly. Still, I have a bruise on my hip and I scratches my knees, elbow and back.
The GPS signal went a bit wonky around the 25-30 Km part of the circuit, but luckily I had Race Screen set up so I could still do an accurate tracking of time and distance with the official KM signs painted on the street.
Not a bad day overall though, and I think I might have been smiling since race finish
