And now a dispatch from Matthew Newman, head of Dojo Europe. Matthew ran a great race at the Antwerp marathon this past week, racking up a new PR. And now from Matthew:
Hello dojo mates,
I know the attention yesterday was on the London marathon, but I ran 42K in Antwerp. I finished in 3:13:01, a new personal best. I am very pleased with the time as it's one minute and 14 seconds faster than my previous record of 3:14:15 at the Brussels marathon in October 2012. I came in 202 place out of about 1,700, a little more than an hour after the winner (Belgian Abdelhadi El Hachimi finished the run in a remarkable time of 2:12:53).
The weather was great. Nice and chilly in the morning and no rain. Antwerp is a flat course except for a slight climb as you leave the 1.7-kilometre Waaslandtunnel under the Schelde River. The tunnel was rather annoying, long and polluted. However, we mostly ran through bland suburbs and a nice park at the end. No offence to Antwerp, but the architecture outside of the historic centre is totally banal. Nothing really to look at. There was one street that had some interesting art nouveau buildings. That was it. The rest was very typical Belgian post-war apartments.
I started out with a 3:15 pacer, who told me before the race that he was going to try to finish in 3:14. There were two 3:15 pacers and after about 15 kilometers they split apart. I had my iPod for 29 kilometers unit it went flat. It was nice to have some music because it drowned out the pounding of shoes on asphalt. This is rather distracting for me.
I kept ahead of the 3:15 pacer because I didn't like running in the pack. I kept up with a strong runner for about 5k and then eventually passed him. I was perhaps 50 meters ahead of the pack for most of the race.
The race got interesting at the 35K mark when we got out of the park. The pacer was certainly cruising at that point. The course was a bit difficult because we were running along a wide industrial area with some gusty wind.
I started to slow down and I couldn't keep ahead. I eventually fell behind the pack, and at one point I was about 200 meters away from them. This was rather upsetting because I thought I was not going to break 3:15. But I kept pushing on, knowing that the other pacer was behind me. I recalled those windy days on Hain's Point and I knew I would break through.
At the 40K mark, we finally went into the historic area of Antwerp. The crowd was great. I pushed as hard as I could to catch up to the pack. At the end, it was just a group of about 10 runners. I ended up about 25 meters behind them after a sprint on my worn legs.
Overall, the atmosphere was nice and I met some friendly Flemish people. It was a great race!
Matthew
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