Portugal Half-Marathon 2012

Competion Name: Portugal Half-Maraton
Length: 21Km
Data: 30th of September 2012
Minimum Goal: - 1h 45m
Personal Challenge: -1h 35m
Time Record in Similar Competitions: 1h 31m 33s
Power Song: Bricks (by Rise Against)

Due to some requests I've decided to write my first (and, depending on feedback, perhaps the last) post in English. I hope you'll excuse my mistakes, since after running 21Km I'm not exactly at my prime.

After a long break due to health issues (last time I competed officially was in October 2011) I finally managed to run again. For this purpose, no other race could be better than the emblematic Portugal Half-Marathon. Starting amid the beautiful Vasco da Game bridge, it certainly has one of the best courses I've had the chance to step into. Still, the peaceful river was not enough to set my mind at ease.

Eleven months is far too long be away from the concrete, and I feared my legs and my heart would not be up to the task. With this in mind, I decided to cast away any thoughts of breaking my personal record today: there will be plenty of time for that over the following years. The personal challenge I set for this race, 1h 35m, reflects this lack of confidence. On the bright side, I was going to wear for the first time (in official competitions) my fairly new - and weightless! - Nike LunarGlide, which are simply amazing.

The start wasn't by any means unusual, rather the huge mess I've already grown accustomed to. I won't even bother to suggest (once again) the existence of different starting areas according to personal time records (as is the case in other competitions); it's already been made clear that no one from the organization reads my blog, or if they do they don't care. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Nevertheless, being prepared for it doesn't make it any easier and my lap times over the first kilometers suffered greatly (check the table below).

It was only over the fourth kilometer that the crowd seemed to spread a bit, allowing me to keep a steady pace. I was aiming for a modest 4m30s per kilometer and in fact didn't stir much from it over the next laps. It was extremely pleasant to know that I'm still able to keep a steady and natural pace; some things never do change. Near the 6th kilometer there's was a band (there were some along the course, to cheer the runners up) playing some really nice and soft broken heart songs. Really nice, but not exactly what I want to hear while I'm running. Luckily my new earphones have a quite handy volume control, so I set my Ipod to deafening mode.

Unfortunately, others do. After the 15th kilometer mark a stitch in the right side slowly started to build up. I tried to follow my gym's motto (When your body screams, tell him to shut up) but the pain was soon excruciating and proved itself unbearable. I was forced to slow down, which explains my poor performance over that fraction of the course.

Only at the end of the 19th kilometer, perhaps with some psychological effect coming to aid, did the pain go away, allowing me to keep my pride intact and cross the finish line at considerable speed. Overall it took me 1hour 38minutes and 52 seconds to run the whole 21kilometers, which is not so bad considering the somewhat grim circumstances. I will definitely need some training in order to tackle the full Lisbon Marathon in December. Until then there are some 10Kms races which I'll probably attend, so my legs don't grow too lazy.

I found it interesting to note that my average BPM ('heart' beats per minute) was 178, with a peak of 190. The first is too high, while the latter is too low. I still remember when I was able to push well over 200BPMs.... guess I'm growing older. For the ones who might find it interesting, my polar watch says that I've burnt 1489Kcal.

On a final note, I find it only fair that the organization gets the deserved credit for this awesome event. Apart from the messy start already mencioned above, everything else was perfect: every kilometer was conveniently marked with an easily spottable sign, there were support stations every three or four kilometers (I only took advantage of 3 though) which were adequately stashed with water, powerade (yey!) and, near the end, bananas and some disgusting and awfully tasting power gel that I ravashed within a heartbeat. The T-shirts were great (although I haven't tried mine so far), the medal is pretty cool and they finally decided to offer delicious Magnum ice-creams at the end, in exchange for the usual crappy calyptos and whatever. Moreover, this edition's chip was included in the chest piece with the running number, in opposition to the running shoes' chips which always manage to get the shoelaces untied. It's true I still had to stop to re-tie my shoelaces once, but that was simply due to my lack of tying skills.

1st Km: 5m09s   2nd Km: 4m41s   3rd Km: 5m35s   4th Km: 4m21s   5th Km: 4m33s
6th Km: 4m29s   7th Km: 4m35s   8th Km: 4m34s   9th Km: 4m18s   10th Km: 4m19s
11th Km: 4m17s   12th Km: 4m16s   13th Km: 4m38s   14th Km: 4m28s   15th Km: 4m27s
16th Km: 4m 48s   17th Km: 5m19s   18th Km: 5m25s   19th Km: 5m25s   20th Km: 4m32s
21st Km: 4m34s


Filipe Baptista de Morais