First Half-marathon!

Vienna, Sunday, it’s 6.40 am and I’m at my computer, looking at the marathon website, which also has a countdown clock to the start. What? An hour and 15 minutes? But it was supposed to start at 9. Did I forget to change my watches? ….It seems there’s a mistake on the website….

7.56 am and I join the queue to the toilet, which I get to after a mere 23 minutes. Then I find myself a place in the group of 30,072 runners, and off we go, eventually. It’s ok. It’s a beautiful day, and not too difficult to run among other people. I don’t have a sense of extreme competitiveness which could be my downfall in a smaller group of people – it’s ok for people to pass me.

At 4 km my feet start to hurt (predictably; I can now go and get them looked at next week – before I did not dare because I knew I would be told not to run). At about 7 km other km signs appear – 38 – 27 and I realise that the full marathon runners will pass this place again.

The feeding stations are there, and usually the place of a scrum, not least because I’m in the middle of the bulk of the pack and the water has been used faster than they could fill up. Luckily I have my own supply, though not in dinky little bottles around my waist like many other runners.

At about 12 km I find a tap on my shoulder and my son appearing beside me, before taking an action photo – wait for it. A bit later the first people start to walk and I increasingly overtake people, though others also overtake me. At 16-17 km there’s a bit of a climb, somewhere near Schoenbrunn Castle (not that I noticed that!), and then it’s home all along Marienhilfer Strasse. The last couple of kms I overtake lots of people and sprint into the goal to the sounds of ‘Buona Serra’ from Rossini’s ‘Barber of Seville’ which I can still sing.

Took 2:02:31; with an average speed of 5:48 per km almost consistently throughout the run, which was better than my estimated 6 minutes per km (the maps of Vilnius must be quite good!). 39^th in my age-and-gender group out of 174 (some woman, born the year after me, finished in 1:34. Incredible!).

It feels great!