Tag Archives: marathon

2014 Standard Chartered Marathon

Year ago I was far from ready for full marathon. I went for the half marathon distance, pulled my calf 3 days before the race and ended up running through brutal pain. That was really stupid. It took a month before I could resume even very light training. But after that race I decided that in 2014 I will go for the full marathon. So when the registrations 2014 Standard Chartered Marathon opened in October 2013 I duly signed up.

Initially after getting the spot I was quite excited as this was to be my first full marathon. But then I squeezed in freezing marathon before Christmas and the initial excitement somehow evaporated. Moreover I had no special preparation for marathon as all my training was focused on the trail running races. Endurance was not a problem. But to keep pretty much half marathon pace over 42km of never ending concrete – for that I definitely haven’t trained at all. So the closer it was getting to the race date the more I felt that this race is something I am not too keen on doing. But as I signed up already I decided to do it.

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Christmas Marathon in Žilina – My first full marathon

I haven’t done proper full marathon race yet. My first one was to be the Standard Chartered Marathon in Hong Kong in February 2014. Then by chance I found out that back in my home town Christmas Run over different distances is organized every year. Knowing I will be there at that time I thought that it would be good training run ahead of HK100 (not for the hills, just for the distance). And I also found it quite cool to run my first marathon in Žilina, back in the place where I grew up. So I signed up.

I got quite used to doing 40km training trail runs but this of course was going to be a bit different. First of all this was a road race on pretty much flat course so the pace would be much faster than on my hilly training runs. The other factor would be the weather – hard to tell how the freezing temperatures would affect me over the course of the race (it was -6C when the race started).

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