15: Happy Mother's Day!!!

Sunday 9, 2010

Maastricht – for Vise to do Marathon.

The necessary pre-marathon preparations of early sleep, chilling out and just making sure that I got up at 7am, to get ready in an hour to catch the first and only train that would get me to the town of Vise.

The streets had a nice mist like thin fog. The weather felt nice and not too chilly for a Sunday morning race. Having bough the tickets the day before I didn’t have to worry too much about getting that sorted out, but I did have to find the correct platform.  It was actually quite simple and the ride was smooth sailing. Arrived into town and checked in my bag and got the pre-race jitters out of the way.

For the last 5 weeks I’ve been struggling with a tight tendon/muscle in my left ankle. This injuiry has prevented me from doing the necessary mileage for proper training. I had stopped training about 2.5 weeks prior to the trip, and have not run (unless for the plane/bus/train). For those that are curious, my longest run was 33km sometime in Early April, about a week prior to this tightness.

30 minutes prior to the race and the site gets a hopping with runners, spectators and the place is a buzzing.  Chatted with a couple of locales (many probably sensed I was from out of town) and they were all surprised that I was from Canada. Some thought I was English, American or even Japanese?? Corralled up to the Start line and just tried to focus on what I wanted to accomplish! A good run to the finish would be ideal, but I knew it’d be hard for such a feat, given the lack of training.

My plan for the race was to just try and go to the 10km, 21.1km or 30km. I wanted to keep up with the 3:45 pace and up until 14km I was with them, they dropped me at the hill. So I dropped back and started to run with a fellow from Brussels. Sometimes in big races everyone is with their ipods/music devices and they are in their zone, and don’t bother getting to know others. It’s not the most ideal location to chat with someone, but it keeps the morale up. Having run with the faster group for 3:45 pace, just under 5, it was mentally tough to just drop back to the 4:00 pace. That didn’t last too long as I was fading and feeling the lack of training. I ended up giving up around 35km, more than expected, but delighted to just got past the 5km mark. A little bit of that push was my competitive side, but it was also the volunteers, other runners and the scenic  route that really inspired me to finish. Even though I stopped with 7km to go, I knew there was nothing in my tank to drive me. So I got into the medic car and we drove to the finish. Along the way I could see the others that had passed me earlier in the race and they determination, and form were inspiring to witness. Although I felt guilty for not finishing, I knew that if I pushed I wouldn’t have a good holiday. So I weighed the options of finishing with a bad time that I wouldn’t even like OR give up and not be too sore for my time in the Netherlands. I’m really glad I made the choice to stop.

If you ever get a chance to do the Maas Marathon, I would suggest you give it a try OR any other marathon in Europe. Running on cobble stones and narrow streets was different, and the scenic route was amazing. The weather was Great! 15 with sun (I got a bit of a suntan/heat exhaustion during the race.) But some water, a shower and food solved that problem.

The reason I choice this location was that JW was doing the ½ and was also going up to Scotland, so I figured what a great way to enjoy the race day. In the end I did see her after  the race heading back to Maastricht. She looked like she was hurting, but still delighted to have finished! Congrats on doing an overseas ½. Next time I will finish!

Onwards with the day meant that I would take a train from Maastricht to Breda (2.25 hr) train ride up North heading towards Rotterdam, near the border of Belgium once again.

Got picked up from the Zi, daughter of my mother’s friend, and we walked 10min from the train station towards their house.  Breda was a military town, used to stop attacks from the water towards Rotterdam/Amsterdam and the rest of Netherlands. It was used to protect the border. The town looked small, but there was a pedestrian square and many many bike lanes. I will have to explain the bike lanes in full for the next post.

Still sore from the race, I just had to get stretching and just have a nice break from the ON THE GO mentality of the last couple of days.