Start was at 9am, and almost everyone was running short/short. I had brought a long-sleeve with me, but stuffed it into my Camelbak before the gun went off.
Lot of charities collecting money. The main one "Phoeniks" had runners collect some change from the people watching, and then dumping them into big bins caried around by bikes .. didn't see much of that going after 15k ...
The first highlight of the course. After about 12k it goes down to the harbor. Really a Tour de France atmosphere here, with tons of people screaming at you. As it is also downhill, this is a tricky section to keep to your pace. I was okay for now: I wanted to run about 28min for each 5k section to be able to go sub-4h. I was just a bit slower, but made sure to drink as much as I could, try to keep as cool as was possible, and preserve energy for the second half.
The next very nice section comes around the 15k mark. When shooting this picture I had the main downtown area behind me. The nice thing about Hamburg is that there is a lot of water, and the downtown area is bordered by two artificial lakes: Binnenalster ("Inner Alster", the name of the dammed river) and Außenalster ("Outer Alster") which you can see in the background of the picture. The loop around Außenalster is about 7k and is the main running training area for those who want to "be seen".
This is shortly after the half-marathon mark - still pretty crowded and it stayed that way to the end. I had passed the half-way point in 2:01:14, so I needed to run a little bit faster in the second half if I wanted to break 4 hours.
I was starting to feel the heat and slowed down just a bit up to the 30k mark, even with my heart rate getting higher. I didn't want to kill myself three weeks before Rennsteig, so I was thinking about just running it in. I wasn't feeling all too good as well, but hoped it was just a bad patch and wanted to give it 2 more k before cutting myself a bit slack.
By then I was feeling a little bit better, so I decided to give 4 hours a try. Any HR guidelines were thrown out, a rough calculation required me to run about 5.30Min/k for the rest. I was still taking my time at the aid stations to try to cool down, so I had to run even a bit faster than that. But I manged (barely), and still had to sprint a bit to reach the finish line after 3:59:55. (Thought of waiting 4 more seconds ;-))
Right after the finish, pretty cooked and a little sunburned.
Being able to raise the pace even when not feeling all too great was a big confidence booster for Rennsteig. Now I need to focus on recovering in time and not doing anything stupid ...
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