Antwerp Marathon
Four weeks ago, I ran the Berlin marathon with the stretch goal of finishing a marathon in under three hours. I improved my PR by over four minutes there, but finished well out of reach of the sub-three goal I had in mind. While I was happy with the result, I could not shake the feeling that I could have done better: issues with high blood sugars made my legs tense up early in the race, which made me blow up in the second half of the race. Two days later, when I could walk with only a mild amount of pain, I got the idea of running the Antwerp marathon four weeks later. While the idea seemed crazy, it made some degree of sense: I could get another race out of the hours I spent training this summer, and I could get some additional marathon experience without too much stress: I already finished my goal marathon this autumn, so anything I may or may not accomplish in this race would just be a bonus. While I officially took some time to decide, my mind was made up the moment the idea entered my head. On the 22nd of October, 4 weeks after running Berlin, I lined up in Antwerp to race my fifth marathon.
The Course
While the Antwerp marathon is certainly less famous than Berlin it did seem like a tempting target: it is close, which meant I didn’t need to spend too much time planning, it is also organized by golazo, whose logistics I am familiar with, and it is a fairly flat course. On the flip side, we don’t really have large, popular marathons in Belgium, which means that I’d be running alone and away from crowds for large parts of the race.
Click for a scrollable version.
Training & Preparation
One of the reasons I decided to run this race was that I did not have to spend a significant amount of time training. Since I only had 4 weeks between Berlin and Antwerp, I would spend most of my time recovering from Berlin and most of the remaining time tapering for Antwerp. For these 4 weeks, I followed the 4-week multiple marathon plan described by Pfitzinger in “Advanced Marathoning”. In short, I’d spend the first two weeks recovering, the third week had some actual training, and the fourth week would consist of recovering for the big day.
I mostly followed this schedule, making a few small changes based on circumstance and on how I felt. In the end, my calendar looked as follows. As usual, Mondays were rest days and thus not included.
| Week | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (39K) | Rec (8K) | Rec (10K) | Rec (8K) | GA (11K) | ||
| 2 (60K) | Rec (8K) | GA (13K) | GA + speed (13K) | Rec (8K) | Long (18K) | |
| 3 (71K) | VO2Max (13K) | Rec (8K) | Long (24K) | Rec + speed (8K) | Long (18K) | |
| 4 (39K) | Rec (10K) | Rec + speed (8K) | Rec (6K) | Race (42K) |
Shown on a map, it looks as follows:
My training runs on a map.
While I was certainly hobbling in pain during the first few runs, the training worked out pretty well in general. It did not take me long to run with my usual confidence. During the long runs, however, it did quickly become obvious that my legs had not completely recovered from Berlin yet: they quickly became sore far faster than they should be.
Somewhere during the second week, I updated my heart rate zones, which made me run a bit slower in general. This made me recover from the longer runs a bit faster. One benefit of the short training cycle is that I did not have any time to get anywhere near a point where I got sick of training. Before I knew it, race week was there.
Race Week
Since I was mentally considering this race as a “bonus”, I did not really stress out about it like I usually do during race week. I opted to recycle most of my race day plans from Berlin and Gent in order not to think about the race too much. Evidently this kept me in the right headspace since I was not talking about my upcoming race with anybody who would listen like I usually would.
I did swear of alcohol and caffeine for the week as usual. I also tried to get some extra sleep, but an absent girlfriend and a few deadlines at work made this difficult. In the end I slept a reasonable amount each day, though not as much as I would have liked. I worked a bit harder to finish work for my Saturday deadline on Thursday evening so that I could take things easy the final few days before the marathon.
On Friday, I started carb loading for the race; I also experimented with my race-day breakfast to avoid nasty surprised on race day. While I considered this race as a bonus, I did not want to have sugar ruin my day like in Berlin. I went out for my last recovery run on Saturday and noticed my legs were really sluggish. I hoped this was just the case because I did not run on Friday, and not an indication of my legs not being fully recovered yet.
Race Day
While I went to bed at a decent time, I slept like shit on the night before the race. Since I had a busy week, I did most of my planning for race day on Saturday evening, which meant that the prospect of running the marathon was looming in my mind. In the end, I ended up sleeping less than 3 hours.
I was therefore, pretty grumpy all morning to the point I considered not starting. Nevertheless, I turned on some comfy music and got ready quite fast. I ate my new breakfast (oatmeal with some raisins and sugar) and headed towards Antwerp. While I still had a sugar peak an hour or two after my breakfast, the peak was far more manageable than it had been in Berlin. I mainly ignored it and let the insulin in my system run its course.
I arrived at the venue and was ready half an hour before I was supposed to. I took the opportunity to cheer on my neighbor and a colleague who were part of the half-marathon and jogged over to the start area. Before I started, I was happy to see my sugar was at an ideal level for starting out. In fact, due to the insulin still in my system, I decided to eat a last minute banana before the start. A few mental utterances of “why am I doing this” and “fuck my life” later, we were off!
The Race
I was not sure about the time I could expect running on tired legs. Nevertheless, the whole point of this race was to get a second try at getting close to the three-hour barrier. Therefore, I had decided to start out close behind the three-hour pace group, evaluate after a few kilometers and adjust accordingly. In no circumstances would I pass the three-hour pace group before the halfway mark.
Thus, when we started, I tailed the three-hour pace group. I noticed they took off like a rocket, but I was feeling good, the weather was cool, and my heart rate was still quite low, so I stuck close. After the first kilometer or so I noticed that my heart rate had not gone up at all and remained at 130 or so, which is way too low for the pace I was running at. Amusingly, my Garmin saw this too and told me my performance condition (metric for how “in shape” you are that day) was at +10, which is the highest I’ve ever seen. I realized that the readings were way off, and decided to keep a close eye on it. However, I was still feeling good and not pushing too hard, so I stuck behind the three-hour pace group. As a precaution, I did drop a bit further behind in the pack.
At the 2K mark, I finally got to see my actual heart rate. It was at a whopping 177, which is way beyond my marathon pace heart rate range. I slowed down and let the group go, dropping my pace sharply. I soon realized that I would not break three, as my heart rate remained high even when running at a slower pace. I still had some hope for a PR, however, so I pushed a bit. When my heart rate refused to go down, I tucked myself in behind a slower man and paced off him for a while. This evidently helped, as my heart rate slowly lowered into the 160s. Once I let go of him after a while, however, my heart rate would climb right back to the 170s. The strong headwinds were not helping with this either.
My overly fast start is clearly visible in the official 5K splits:
| Official 5K split | 20:24 |
While I managed to occasionally dip back into the 160s, it became very clear that this race would not come to a good end. My legs were already feeling like they had during all of my long runs of the training block by the 8K point or so. At that moment, it was clear to me that I was in for a bad time. I seriously considered dropping out, but figured I could not do that to my family who came all the way to Antwerp just to cheer me on.
| Official 10K split | 43:27 |
While the banana at the start had made my sugar spike, it was now slowly going down again. I took my first gel at this point. When I met my family soon after, I took one additional gel from them and let them know that today was not going to be my day.
I will spare you the details of my slow decline, but I can assure you, dear reader, that it was not very fun, I progressively slowed down over the following kilometers, as I had to run slower and slower to keep my heart rate in an already not reasonable place. From time to time, I would tuck in behind a slower runner for a while, which would give me some reprieve. However, at some point, they would slow down too much, and I’d invariably pass them just to get my heart rate back to the low 170s.
| Official 15K split | 1:06:12 |
| Official 20.6K split | 1:33:27 |
| Official 25K split | 1:50:53 |
At some point after running through a graveyard (and resisting just rolling into a grave to end my misery), the 3:15 pace group caught up with me. At this point I realized my time would not only be worse than Berlin, but also worse than any marathon I ran in the last year or two. I resigned myself to my fate, and convinced myself this experience could be useful as a mental training. I promised myself not to walk at any point in the race, no matter how bad things got.
Around the 26K point I met my little family-fanclub again. This time, my sister, brother-in-law and their kids had joined the fun. Their cheering got me running at a brisker pace for a bit until my heart rate called me back. My mom was yelling at me asking why I don’t just stop if it’s not going well; luckily, I did not understand her at this point, as my resolve to not DNF partly came from not wanting them to come all this way for nothing.
| Official 29K split | 2:14:39 |
By the time 30K point, I was completely destroyed, my legs were long gone, my heart rate was invariably in the 170s and, to make things worse, my stomach was very upset. Even drinking a sip of water at this point would make it produce ominous warning signs.
| Official 35K split | 2:45:01 |
One benefit of my misery was that the crowd seemed to give me a lot of sympathy, I’ve never heard so many “come on Mathijs!” in one race. This really helped me stick to my “no-walking” goal which was pretty much the only silver lining I could still salvage from this day.
At this point, my sugar was also dropping rapidly, which greatly worried me, as my stomach was closed for business. When I passed my family-fanclub on the course for the last time, I asked them if they could get me some coke before they went over to the finish.
| Official 38.9K split | 3:03:18 |
I passed the final few kilometers telling myself (and some other people who had started walking) that there were only a few more kilometers to go. I got pretty close to walking a few times, but managed to break into a recovery-style jog instead every time.
As some bonus fun, the last few kilometers consisted of many cobblestone streets. While I can handle cobblestones better than most I absolutely could not at that point. I avoided them by jumping on the sidewalk where possible, accidentally missing the 39.7K timing mat in the process.
Mercifully, at around the 41K point, the course opened up, and I could see the finish calling us. There was still an out and back again to go, but that seemed to pass quite fast. Finally, I reached the red carpet, saw my family-fanclub, squeezed out a last-effort sprint, made a finger-over-neck gesture at the camera man and finished my stupid experiment.
Aftermath
To her credit, my mom was waiting after the finish line with the requested bottle of coke. She had asked if she could pass into the runners area, so she could give it to me for medical reasons (i.e., for my diabetes). This was most welcome, as it took my family quite some time to find me after I finished.
I put myself down on a bench somewhere and sipped on the coke as I recovered a bit. Some time after, my family found me, after which we went to grab my stuff and get some lunch. I only managed to eat some soup with bread, but I think I made the right choice, as my upset stomach resumed the tradition of the post-marathon puke.
Results
While I’m obviously not happy with my time, I did finish below 3:30, which I thought I would not several times. Nevertheless, the result is far worse than even I thought it would be before starting out:
| Official Results | |
|---|---|
| Time | 3:24:51 |
| Ranking | 533 (out of 2802 finishers) |
| Age group ranking | 117 (out of 436 finishers) |
Compared with my previous results, it ends up being my second worst marathon time:
| Year | Time | Links |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 3:42:03 | strava, report |
| 2022 | 3:20:34 | strava, report |
| 03/2023 | 3:10:11 | strava, report |
| 09/2023 | 3:06:29 | strava, report |
| 10/2023 | 3:24:51 | strava, report |
Obviously, running a marathon 4 weeks after giving it my all in Berlin was a pretty stupid idea. While the original idea seemed solid, I gravely underestimated how long it would take me to fully recover from running Berlin. The only silver lining is that, no matter how tough things got, I did manage avoid walking. With some luck, this memory will help me pull through a tough spot in a future marathon so that this effort was not a complete waste. That being said; overall thoughts: this was a stupid idea, 0/10 would not recommend.