2:53:35 and "negative" is positive...

... as I could finish the Ohtawara Marathon with a negative split.
First 21.1k went by in 1:27:23 with the second half in 1:26:12.
But one after the other...
Christiane and myself gratefully accepted Colin's offer going to Ohtawara by car. We started at 3pm on Thursday and arrived at a scenic and really good Italian Restaurant close to the hotel at around 6pm. Pasta, Pizza and some beers/wine/water tasted very delicious and everybody enjoyed the pre-Marathon talks about this and that. The hotel was ok and we could get a good night sleep. Next morning we went to the Marathon site by car and Colin assured us that this Marathon is perfectly organized, even for Japanese standards. "You will be feeling like a professional runner", he told us. And it was 100% true. Starting area, Gymn., showers, etc. everything very close together and by far not crowed by the ca. 1200 runners.
My plan was to run with Steve for the first 25k or so and then we both will see where we stand. Pace should be around 4:05-4:10 for both of us in the first half. Because my usual running watch broke down the evening befor the Marathon I decided wearing Christiane's GPS watch. Well, it turned out that the memory of the watch was full and so the GPS did not store the race data and in addition it showed strange (=completely wrong) pace data for the first 10k. Well, I decided to ignore the watch because getting nervous about it or thinking about it wouldn't help me either ;-)
The course is a two loop course and that's exactly the kind of course I like. Well, out-and-back is my all-time favorite but for M-race two-loopers are even greater.
Steve and I planned to run the first 21k with as less effort as possible and a target half around 1:27. First 5k went by in 21 min. which was really close to where we wanted to be. 5-10k was exactly 4min/km pace due to the downhill/tailwind condition. 10-15k was smooth as well but unfortunately the slight uphill section from 16k-20k turned out to be a very nasty headwind section. We both could somehow hide a little behind other runners but it became clear that this section would be very interesting to run in the second half... As we passed the HM in 1:27:23 Christiane was cheering at us and in a blink of a second I decided to change my race strategy. I initially planned to run the last 12k very strong, e.g. almost at 15k pace and by doing so getting a negative split time. But having seen the head wind section I took off at the half mark and targeted a strong 21k-35k stretch instead. The faster pace felt not too bad and I kind of settled into a sub-4min/km pace. GPS was still not working reliably and I can not give any hard data for that part of the race. I passed the 30k mark in 2:01 and the 40k mark in 2:44. From 35k on the race became very, very hard and I concentrated only to push as much as I can. I thought about giving up and not finishing the race many times. That’s quit normal at that point into the race because the brain wants to avoid the effort and this seems to be the only way out (poor brain, because it had to stay with my body till the end ;-) ). But I knew deep inside I could have a strong finish and so I pushed even harder. The support from the Nambans around 40k was great. I did not recognize all of them since my visuals became unclear at that time. My only thought was to push every stride harder. There was not much left inside of me and when I crossed the finish line it felt like a big relief.
I am very satisfied with my race result. Preparation went very well and this was the first decent M result in 3 years.
I am looking forward to Tokyo Marathon 2008.