Lisbon Marathon, 5th of October 2014

Lisbon Marathon, 5th of October 2014

This was my first marathon and Anneli’s second. I had prepared for it since May when, after completing the Madrid 1/2 Marathon, I felt I wanted more.

Anneli and her friend had arrived a few days earlier and done all the sightseeing required when visiting a new city. Christopher and I have been to Lisbon many times and it is always wonderful to come back. We have no must-sees left but can just hang out and enjoy the atmosphere. On Saturday, we visited the expo to get our start kit, after that we had pasta and just chilled out for the rest of the day. Anneli and I had to save energy for the coming day.

After sleeping a shade over 3 hours we were up and ready to travel to the start line. I was awfully tired the night before, but when in bed it was impossible to sleep – I wasn’t nervous, merely excited. The race course ran from Cascais and all the way along the coast to the centre and finished at Parque das Nações.

For the first 20km or so the view was absolutely stunning, running on N6, I was able to see the sun rise over the beach, people taking their morning swim, surfers and morning joggers. Quite a few people were running in the opposite direction saluting us as we ran past towards Lisbon. I was keeping an eye out for Christopher, but I couldn’t see him so it seemed like I had missed him. When I finally spotted him at 30km I was close to crying, out of happiness and exhaustion, but with still 12 km to go I had to focus – forza!

When getting closer to the centre the scenery changed, we were running behind the industrial harbour and it offered little distraction to all the discomfort I felt in my legs and shoulders. We had run through the centre, which, as such, was really nice but running on cobblestones was tiring and I had to concentrate more to not stumble on the uneven surface. When reaching 35km or so I was really tired, I tried to count down, encouraging myself with how few kilometres I had left and it worked quite well. I must have got dehydrated because I felt sick and thought I would vomit. By then the energy gels tasted awful, but I knew I had to continue taking them.

We had started off running the first 5 kilometres together and then been separated – but still very close in distance for the rest of the race. I ran a little before Anneli until she passed me in the centre. I lost sight of her when I had to walk to not lose my stomach contents at 33km. I only caught sight of her when there was 300 metres left and managed to catch up. It felt awesome to cross the finish line together – we actually received the exact same finish time.