Ich bin keine jelly doughnut#

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 00:48:56 +0000

Back from Berlin half-marathon. Yes, I did get my feet cast for new boots, and yes I was able to enter the race. Which was nice. In the interests of ecological soundness (and the secondary purpose of being able to find it more easily later) I have recycled the rest of this entry from what I posted to the LSST forum. More post-race analysis to follow some time when I've caught up a bit.

So, this was my first race where I was able to use pacelines as anything more than temporary windbreaks to skate downwind of. My 41.50 halfway time in Berlin full marathon last September got me into block B (in which there was a wide range of talent as it contained everyone less than 50 minutes who wasn't in a pro team) and i soon found myself in the second half of the front pack there, where the pace was comfortable or perhaps even a bit slow. It took me about 7k to be sure it was the front pack - seeing Hans further up it was the final piece of the puzzle - and then I started to think about heading up the line to play. Before I got that far, though, Hans dropped back past me with a cramp and I became the only LSST skinsuit in the vicinity.

Over the next few k I percolated gradually up the pack anyway, and even took a couple of pulls - the second being more sucessful than the first, in which I neglected to check whether anyone was following me and found myself skating alone ahead of the pack for a while. Still. it wasn't as if I didn't offer ...

By about 15k or so there seemed to be two groups forming within the pack: the pace at the front had crept up to 33-34k, which made me a bit happier, and I'd pretty much decided to dig in and see what happened nearer the finish.

And then I clipped a skate and went down. Traditional Superman dive on palms, taking skin off knee and elbow. I got up again as soon as the pack had passed and started pushing to catch up, getting slightly closer on each straight and quite a lot on each turn (as with the September marathon, there were a lot of people coasting around corners) until, when I was less than fifty feet from the back of the pack, we turned left and I noticed a lot of people sprinting, a lot of spectators cheering, and the clock at the finish. Drat.

I crossed the line at an indicated 40:30, but afterwards I found that my actual time was 0:39:17 or maybe 0:39:10 (I think the first is from when my block was started and the second from when my chip actually crossed the start mat) so a bit happier to be under forty minutes after all. Still could have done better if I'd stayed upright, though.