VIENNA CITY MARATHON – A PERSONAL REVIEW

Time flies and so the Vienna City Marathon is already over.

Last Sunday was the day – race day.

The past 12 weeks I’ve trained for this special event and my goal of finishing the VCM 2015.

As you guys know, I had to quit my plans last year because of a bone marrow edema. This year my training went fine, until about 3 weeks prior to the race. After a race pace run with some intervals I felt a severe pain in my foot. My foot swell up and I could hardly walk. After seeing the doctor and getting the diagonse of a starting fatique fracture I first thought that I wouldn’t accomplish my mission this year either. After a week of alternative training and special therapies and a week of light training, the pain was gone and I started with my normal training again. Like a miracle I didn’t even feel the pain during running, only when I rested, but tolerably.pre race selfie with the mister and my sister

So let’s talk about the race and my marathon experience.A little bit nervous and anxious I started into the race, not knowing if my foot is going to ache or not, or any other problems are going to occure. Well, that’s maybe the feeling everyone experiences on the starting line.

After the starting signal my nervoussnes was finally gone and I tried to start running my pace within the crowd of 40 000 people, not that easy on the first few kilometers.

Thanks to my Garmin fenix3  (read more about this fantastic multi-sports watch here) I always had an eye on my pace and tried not to over pace.

At about km 22 – thank you Claudia for the pictures!

I felt really good on the first half oft he race, although it was extremely hot and windy I really had to hold myself back and stop myself from running too fast, as I knew there were another much tougher 21km waiting for me. At about kilometer 25-30 I felt the best and so I think that I was lucky enough to tap into somekind of runner’s high , running felt easy, exhilarating, even euphoric. But than I returned to the Prater and my body started to react to the heat, the wind and the extreme physical strain it was going through. My injured food started to ache and every step felt super hard. Between km 30 & 35 the race was really though. At that point so many athletes were walking and the ambulance just passed by every few minutes to treat totally dehydrated athlethes. I knew that around kilometer 35 a marthon race was said to be the thoughest, so I tried to smile the pain away (such a great tip from Chrissie Wellington – 4 times Ironman World Champion) and it really worked. Those 5 kilometers have been the longest in my life, they felt like 20km or more.

At about kilometer 36 I felt better and started to count the meters on my Garmin fenix3, every 100 meters felt like a small victory and helped me to forget the pain in my left foot. Making the last left turn onto the „Ring“ and hearing thousands of people cheering, gave me the extra push to keep on smiling and pushing on the last meters. The last 500 meters were packed with incredible emotions and great feelings, a few tears and a smile that must have been visible to the moon. Crossing the finsh line and finsihing something you have trained for felt simply incredibly great. Well, so after 4hours28minutes&46seconds I completed my first marathon.

starting line of the VCM from DC TOWER 

I’ve not reached my personal goal, but as it has been a really though race due to the weather conditions and my injured foot, I’m super proud of myself for pushing my body to the limit and reaching my sporty dream.

MISSION 1st MARATHON – ACCOMPLISHED!