Four Marathons on four continents in 50 weeks, sorry I had to write it down for it to sink in properly.
Words cant describe how I felt yesterday after I crossed the line after pounding the roads of Buenos Aires for 4hours and 31 minutes.
It isn't too often that I doubt myself but the past week I really didnt think I was going to be sitting here today writing this story. I didnt do any training since the Sydney Marathon and most of my excercise involved having one or two beers and throwing shapes on some dance floor between Santiago and Buenos Aires.
I got up at 5:30am yesterday and was having some breakfast when a guy from Peru spotted me and asked could he share a taxi to the startline as he was running the Marathon also.
It was like a typical morning from back home, damp and drizzling which I didnt mind but I was bit annoyed that I put half a bottle of SPF40 on my head.
We kicked off at 7.30am and Walter the guy from Peru and I decided to stick together and see how the race progressed. It was his first Marathon and he was very cautious about going out too fast at the start. It worked really well for me as I tend to get carried away when racing and usually go out like a greyhound.
After 2km I felt the knee that has been giving me trouble the past few weeks starting to send out the warning signals. It got worse by 10km but only because we were on a motorway overpass that was uneven. The rain worked out great as it kept us nice and cool during the Marathon but it did get heavy at some stages and my ears were so full of water I couldn't hear the music on my ipod.
Thankfully my knee didnt get any worse but Walter was having some problems and we had to stop a few times.
The whole hostel knew that I was running and I used that to motivate myself and also the fact that some of the lads promised me a few free beers if I got to the finishline also helped. It was also great to be running with someone else and we used each other for support during the race.
At the 25mile mark I said to Walter I'd see him at the finish as I felt good enough to go a bit fast for the last mile but a few minutes later I looked back and he was right behind me. He said there was no way he was going to allow me to finish before him as I hadn't trained in three weeks and the only thing I had excercised was my liver :-)
We agreed as we started together that we would cross the line together. Crossing the line was amazing, I haven't felt that good in my other runs. A girl beside us bust out crying when she crossed the line and I started choking up and had to look away.
Once we got back to the hostel we were like celebrities yesterday and all last night we spent posing for photos with our medals, as you do.
Yesterday was by far the great achievment of my short running career, actually no, it's my second as the greatest achievement was putting on my socks the morning after the Sydney Marathon :-)
There are some Marathon photos at this link.
http://www.firstfotofactory.com/cgi-bin/cosmoshop/lshop.cgi?action=showrub&rubnum=events.bueno08&wkid=2004g&ls=e&gesamt_zeilen=10
Just enter bib number 645 or Walters number 1042
