Europe 10th 03:55:05
We all felt much better when we rolled up to the start line for the European leg, if only because the last one had been so awful. The Istanbul marathon club house was the venue, hot showers, changing rooms, numbered table for personal nutrition and marshals out on the course. It was 6 laps of 7km, and the weather was dry and mid-teens – what not to like. All the courses had been more or less flat apart Antarctica which had a small hill into the cold wind which I guess made it feel worse than it really was.
I stuck to the plan and ran the first 2 laps continuously at 5min/km pace to give me the cushion to back off in the second half. The next two laps I ran 2km walked 1 min and the final two laps were run 1km walk 1 minute with a good margin of time in my pocket.
This allowed me to really hit the nutrition hard and make sure I finished fully fuelled up and to give the legs an easier ride, so they weren’t toast at the end. It was a plan to ensure I had the 4 hours in the bag and then start to put my body in a good position to tackle the next marathon. It was tempting to push the pace but after the prospect of 767 last night I just focussed on getting to the end in good shape.By this time as a group, we were really starting to bond, nothing like shared misery to pull us closer together. The course was an out and back, so you saw everyone on every lap and all were giving thumbs up or a ‘well done’ or some other little acknowledgement of support. I crossed the finish line in good shape, popped medal number 5 around my neck then headed to get changed, have a shower and go to a nearby café to get some food. That’s now 555 and the body recovered and ready for the next one – how different things looked last night when I started number 4.
There was a lot of traffic to get back to the airport then the now predictable faff as someone forgot their passport or lost a bag etc etc. In fact one person hadn't made it to Australia as they hadn't bothered to get their visa ahead of time....they had a 667 for their trouble!
The trip through the airport back to the plane was less eventful but still a fair amount of faff before we were back sat in our seats and onwards to South America. Given the lack of sleep over the last two days I opted to go straight to sleep on the plane for the 12-hour flight rather than eat first. Sleep and body fatigue was always going to be my undoing, not the running, so I always prioritised rest over food. Marathon 4 had shown that running at an easy pace without any food was doable and very much the way I had been training, fasted first thing in the morning.
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