Hi everyone,
Hopefully there's room for another London marathon post. About me mid 30s, male, I have been running for about 5/6 years and I take it quite seriously. Last year January I ran Seville half marathon in 1 hour 31 mins and I have been training since then and doing some mid distance track evens during last summer season. Started a 16weeks training plan for this marathon aiming for sub 3 hours with peak weeks been around 110kms per week.
I moved countries first of March so I had to change plans and I didn't run any 10k or half marathon race something I wanted to do but the training plan was good other than some soleus problems which put me to not training properly 2 days, rest for 2 more and take it wasy to recover the 2 after. I got to London Marathon with the impression sub 3 hours was clearly doable if things go well on race day.
The day of the race I was having a clear plan of sticking to the 3 hours pacers and if I feel strong around kms 32 to 35 maybe trying to go a bit faster, but even though I went out relatively quick, my opening 5K was around 4:10 min/km I wasn't anywhere close to the 3 hours pacers which I tried to keep them in sight and not panic about it.
The first 10 kms were completely fine I felt good and just getting into rithm and tried to not overthink the pace and just go by feeling.
Km 16 more or less I felt bad for some time and slowed down a bit but this feeling went away and I started feeling good again.
I went through the half marathon point in 1 hour 29 mins so everything was still as planned.
Km 25 I started to get a stitch and slow down again but I was still hoping this would go away, I was running on pace but by km 30 the stitch just got unbearable and I started to see pace closer to 5 min/km instead of 4:15.
The stitch never went away and the pain stayed so I ended up finishing in 3:09.
I know this is on me, I was not experienced enough and I didn't train long runs where I was eating and drinking as much as I did in London marathon nor running the marathon pace for more than 25/30km but I couldn't help but feel tremendously upset.
Running is really important for me and I truly wanted sub 3 in my first marathon in a historic London Marathon and not getting it made my feel like crying for days. I want to recover and rethink about how to approach running now but I am still feeling low about the whole situation.
Thank you everyone who took the time to read this.