Prague marathon 2019

Prague marathon Vltava bridges 5.5.2019

Why Prague?

It was not my first visit to Prague but the previous one-night stopover did not left much memories. So it was going to be mostly new to me. Anyway, the real reasons to choose Prague were: (1) This particular weekend I was free to travel; (2) It was the nearest country in which I had not yet run a marathon. This would progress my Marathon Club-30 project; the club requires to have run a marathon in 30 different countries. Czech is now #23 in my list. Reaching the goal slowly but steadily.

Race route

It was my first marathon this year but not a big success story. The run was quite painful - aching here and aching there. No drama but the only enjoyment was just to reach the finish line. The marathon started from the old town and the circulated around the Vltava river with 10 bridge crossovers. First 13 km loop to the Northeast and back. Then 15-22 km to south along the eastside, and another loop to along the westside.

The last 32-42 km repeated the northeast loop. The funniest part of the race was at the 7 km mark where supporters had a banner with a message "Only 35 km to go". Good sense of humour. As the route passed-by this location again at 36-37 km, I eagerly waited whether they had updated the message. Indeed they had. They had crossed the number 3 by "X" mark, leaving the new message as "Only 5 km to go".

Not a summer yet

Weather was expected to be summerly but it wasn't. When I left Joensuu it started to snow (!) and cumulated >10 cm during the next night - basically having a second winter for a day or two. In Prague things were not that much better: +4 C although no snow. So not a typical shorts and t-shirt weather. I started to remember if I had run any earlier marathons in a coldish weather like this, and how did I prepare. Some examples found:

New York 2008: +8 C and long waiting in wind. I had a throw-away shirt plus plastic cover that provided nice green house effect and kept me warm. The race itself was just fine and I made my third best time ever (3:00).
Boston 2007: +9 C and rainy. TV forecast made it look like a horrible winter storm along with lines such as: "we won't see any record breakings tomorrow for sure". I over-dressed with a good old Adidas sport trousers and jacket and went to run a new personal best: 3:12.
Chicago 2012: +4-8 C. I used cover sheet from previous New York marathon. The coldness affected my speed though the time (3:11) has been beaten only once (London 2014).
Malta 2017: +10 C with somewhat windy. Had a throw-away shirt and sitted in the church in a sunday morning mass while waiting for the start. The weather itself was nice for running but the wind did cause some tightness and the result (3:19) was a bit worse than my next race a month later (3:13).

Race story

Based on the more recent races I knew the weather would affect my running so I decided to dress accordingly: long leaves. Like in Malta, I again found a church to spend last few minutes. I started from Group C somewhere between 3:15 and 3:30 target groups. The first one went away and I settled to my own pace. I had neither watch nor any time goals. I just ran. Achings were following me almost all the race and the only enjoyment came from reaching the finish line.

The result was poor (3:34) as I have not performed this worse ever since 2005; except Singapore which is always slower due to the heat, jet lag or whatever issue. But who cares. This time I focused merely on having relaxed weekend in Prague. Good beef stake with a glass of beer after the race crowned the day and overweighted any problem by 10-0. It just started to feel like another good marathon completed. Maybe I have finally started to learn to enjoy life?

Summary

Time: 3:34:31
Rank: 1529 / 7300
Weather: 3-6 C

Km      Time      Min/km
5       0:24:35   4:55
10      0:48:53   4:52
15      1:12:56   4:49
20      1:38:37   5:08
21      1:44:10   4:58
25      2:04:04   5:05
30      2:30:27   5:17
35      2:57:08   5:20
40      3:24:27   5:28
42.195  3:34:35   4:37