It’s already been a week but let me give a short overview on how my race went along.
Swim: I knew that swimming was going to be tough. Especially the start in Zurich used to be intense, since you have almost 2000 people starting at once from a 50m wide shore. However, this year I managed to get a good spot at the very left end of the beach. My strategy was to jump/run the first 10-15 meters or so. The water was very shallow so that you could run, dive, stand-up, and jump before swimming. It worked out perfectly and I was leading a little group of swimmers for the first 1 or 200 hundred meters. I did not have any “body contact” or any related issues. The start was perfect! I quickly found my rhythm and found it pretty smooth. Since the sun was still very low it was sometimes difficult to navigate but I had enough people in front of me so that everything worked out perfectly. I entered the transition zone after 1h and 2 minutes. That was about the time I had planned. I was happy.
Bike: After a quick 2-minutes change I was sitting on my bike and was very much looking forward to the bike part. That was my favorite part and I planned 1h40min for each of the three loops. There was no wind, the sun was shining and it was nice and warm. I raced the first and the second loop in 1h and 35min // 1h and 38min. The toughest part were the two climbs in the middle of the lap. We had to climb up two time approx. 200m. While the first climb was relatively steep. The second climb was rather long and “mentally” demanding. The third climp in each lap was hearbreak hill. Although that was really steep, I found it much nicer to climb since it was only 70m in altitude difference and lots of people who cheered. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to eat my power bars as planned. I could not chew them so I decided to switch to power gels. Not the most delicious food, but easy to eat. In my third loop I slowed down a little bit since I did not want to blow before starting the marathon. After 4h56min on my bike, I arrived in the second transition zone. It was about 6hrs after the face started.
Run: After 100m of running I felt that it was going to become tough. My legs were extremely tired/soft and I thought I was moving extremely slowly. At the end this first out of four loops was my fastest in 49mins for 10.5k. Although I felt that I was running smoothly and “recovering” the longer I was underway, I started to have some digestion issues in lap 2 and 3 which made my stop by at mobile toilets three times (!). I think I lost about 10 minutes overall with this events. However, after each “visit” I felt great again. From a subjective feeling, the last lap was my best. I was relaxed, my heart rate was doing ok, and finished the last lap in 52 minutes. I crossed the finish line after 3:37h in the marathon and 9hrs39 overall. I finished 13th in my age group and 74th overall. All in all a nice race.
Athlete’s Garden: I was lucky to find the athlete’s garden pretty empty. I took a quick shower and got a very nice 20-min massage.
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