Marato Barcelona

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.  There is Barcelona. That is the marathon.  You can see the t-shirt for yourself.  A blog entry to do justice to both Barcelona and running a marathon would be of marathon-length, so I'm going to split the topics into two blog entries.  Despite the fact that reading about marathon running may be as interesting to some of you as watching paint dry, it's super interesting and exciting to me, so it's first in line.   Tune in soon for our Barcelona tourist blog. 

It took 4 short hours and 13 very long minutes for Tom and I to officially become marathoners, or as our running group would say, to "lose our marathon virginity".  The experience extended well beyond those hours and minutes though.  The marathon experience began Friday afternoon when we headed to the race expo get our race bibs, timing chips, shirts, and goodie bags.  The expo was quiet when we arrived, so we quickly moved from table to table to get our stuff.  The vibrant t-shirts made up for the sub-par goodie bags, which did not have much for goodies in them, unless you consider advertisements for other European marathons to be treats.  We were told later that night by an experienced marathoner that we were supposed to take pictures of one another getting our race numbers and checking our timing chips at our very first full marathon.  You'll just have to picture it in your mind.  If it doesn't look very exciting, you're probably picturing it correctly.

The real marathon hype began Saturday morning.  Some runners believe that you should go for a short run the day before a marathon, although none could tell me why.  Nonetheless, so many runners believe this that there was an organized breakfast run the day before the marathon.  The atmosphere was fantastic.  It started at the same place as the marathon would start, with fun music playing over the loud speakers, that was good enough to get of the race volunteers dancing. there were about 2000 runners, many carrying their national flags, all in very high spirits.  It was a 4km run, following the last 4km of the 1992 Barcelona Olympic marathon route.  It was so cool to finish a run on the track in the Olympic stadium.  

 We stayed off our feet for most of the day Saturday, and headed out for a pasta dinner with about 40 runners from our Egyptian running club.  The pasta may or may not help your running, but it's a tradition.

Marathon morning was an early one, 6:00am alarm to be precise.  We had breakfast at the hotel at 6:30am and headed to the race.  The morning was a little cold for shorts and a running t-shirt, but we knew that we wouldn't want to have more clothing on us later.  Luckily we were surrounded by about 12 000 people to warm us up before the start. The elites (no, that does not include us) started at 8:30am, and we made it through the starting gate about nine minutes later.  We were finally running the marathon.

The course was great, taking us past most of Barcelona's big attractions.  There were signs at each kilometer, which seemed to by flying by in the early parts of the race.  We were running comfortably, trying to follow everyone's advice to start slow and speed up if you feel good towards the end.  I must have been "in the zone", because around the 18km I mentioned to Tom that I thought we were supposed to be running by Sagrada Famila (the biggest cathedral you can imagine) somewhere between 16-18km.  It turns out that we had run past it, but I somehow did not notice it.  We got to the half-marathon mark (21.1km) with a time of about 2:03, and were feeling great.  At 30km, we were feeling great.  At 32km (only 10km left!), we were feeling great.  It's really too bad that it wasn't a 32km race.  Something changed by kilometer 34.  My legs were feeling tired, and I really needed to use the little girls room.  I was fortunate to find an empty port-a-potty on the course to minimize time loss.  What I did not count on was that if my legs stopped running, even for a short short time, that they would boycott running again.  Tom walked until I caught up with him, and reported the same leg discomfort when he started running again.  Was this the infamous "wall"?!


The last ~5km were quite a struggle, as my calves begged me stop running.  I didn't give in.  Tom was ultra supportive and encouraging, and even ran ahead to get me water when I was feeling really dehydrated.  He may have been a little more tired than he thought, since "running his hardest to get me water quickly" did not get him more than about 10m ahead of me over a minute or two of running.  I still appreciated the gesture.

I wish I could have "turned it on" for the last 2km, but it took everything I could do to prevent "turning off" altogether.  Tom certainly could have finished faster, but he's a wonderful husband, and stuck with a very sore and slightly whiny me right through the finish line.  We held hands as we crossed the finish line, and had one of the best hugs we've ever had.  We did it!  We trained together.  We ran together.  We would soon celebrate together!  Many people have asked us how we felt after the race.  I can't speak for Tom, but the things that come to mind for me are overjoyed, exhausted, and hungry.


Our running group met for champagne and snacks later in the afternoon.  Despite the terribly disrupted training schedules that resulted from the Egyptian revolution, everyone in our group finished, so spirits were really high.  We may have had a serious party if we weren't all so tired.

A few runners believe that you should run the day after a marathon in order to help your legs deal with the lactic acid buildup.  Not that many runners follow this one.  Monday morning Tom and I headed out for our last run in Barcelona, with only 3 other runners.  My legs were still feeling tired, but they got better and better as the run went on.  I was able to walk pretty normally the rest of the day, and my legs haven't been sore this week.  I'm not entirely convinced that it was the run that lead to my speedy recovery, but I'll probably do it again if I ever run another marathon.  So no, I'm not searching for my next marathon as of now.  I'm enjoying having a weekend during which I don't have to get to bed early on the busiest party night of the week to get up and run for 2-3 hours the following morning.  That being said, I'm not discounting more marathons.  I may need to find out how fast I could run a marathon with uninterrupted training.