the perfect weather for a marathon. So, on March 18th, I sailed to the land of the bent power poles for the 25th Steinfurt Marathon, in a good mood.

But what was this?
From Hamm on it kept getting more and more misty and in Steinfurt I was greeted by a dingy soup with a lot of wind and a few snow flakes at 32°F/0°C.
Shit, I hate snow...
Training was already tough because we had had snow on the ground since January and now the weather sucked for the marathon.
So, I took off my sunglasses and put on my long sleeved shirt and gloves. Somewhere along the way to the starter number hand-out, I must have lost my motivation.
The wind was whistling so cold that I would have liked to run home to watch the soccer game from my couch.
I dozed in the car for the last 1.5 hours before the race began at 1:45pm.
Then I started running with 900 other morons.
Time to grit my teeth for 26.2m/42,195km.

The Steinfurt Marathon is one of the first event of the year and here you can tell pretty well how far you have come with your training. There was hardly any spirit coming from the side of the road and we were out of the village and onto the fields quite quickly. Here is where it started getting really windy, just as you would imagine in the flat lands of Münster. At least there wasn't any snow anymore... Even though I didn't intend to crack the 3:30 that day, I ran in front of the 3:30 group. Past cows, farmers and there farms, I settled my run at about 4min 50sec per kilometer and after 11m/18km, I found myself .6m/1km in front of the 3:30 group. By the ship's kobold, that's never happened to me before!
I started getting tired from mile 15/km 25 on. I would have enjoyed lying down at the side of the road and taking a little nap. A coke would have been great, but they only served warm water at the snack stands. It happened at mile number 20/km 32; I heard the feet of the 3:30 group pounding behind me and just a few miles later they passed me.
I realized that nothing more could be gotten out of my body and that I would take longer than 3:30. Blah! Then I really wanted to stay below 3:40 and so I grit my teeth again.
Finally, we were back in the village closing in on the finish line.

I crossed the finish line after 3:35h and felt totally destroyed. I didn' make it any higher than 240th place. In order to be amongst the top 100, I have to be about a half an hour quicker.

Taking the weather into consideration I was pleased though and I have three more marathons to go this year, in which I can attempt to crack the 3:30 at least.
Until then,

Sea Bear Sebo