Don’t worry about how slow you are going in the first kilometre of a Marathon, it will never be your slowest kilometre split.
I’ve written words to this effect quite a few times on this blog, and given that proved to be the case during each of my first 26 Marathons, I would still have to say that generally this will be the case. The advice of not worrying about going too slowly also holds true, yet yesterday I found myself clocking my slowest kilometre split during the first kilometre, with the second kilometre being my next slowest kilometre. So how did I find myself in this situation?
The warning signs were there on Saturday when I went to collect my number from the race expo. Admittedly the expo opened on Friday, and having arrived in Rome late morning I could have collected my number that day. Instead I chose Saturday lunchtime, and had to queue for more than 40 minutes to collect my number. When I found my way to the kit collection area, they had run out of small and medium in the men’s size.
When I arrived at the start yesterday morning, things initially seemed okay. There didn’t seem to be many volunteers around, announcements were infrequent and signage was also limited, but I found my way to the baggage truck fairly easily and the toilet queue was quite short, albeit there was no toilet paper and no water. When I exited the toilet, I tried to make my way towards the starting pen for my wave, but it quickly became apparent that it was gridlocked. A few people tried to weave their way through but didn’t get very far, and such was the variety in the bib numbers and colours around me it was clear that there was a huge range of paces stuck in the same area.
My wave was supposed to start at 08:40, however it was a further 10 minutes before I started. Some of those around me were gunning for sub 3 hours, others were walking the full distance, which made the opening kilometres very chaotic. My first kilometre took 6 minutes 14 seconds, a full minute slower than my planned pace, whilst my second kilometre was also over 6 minutes.
Chaotic starts are nothing unusual, particularly in bigger Marathons. Even with the best organisation, not everyone knows their Marathon pace and not everyone finds themselves in the correct place at the start, either intentionally or unintentionally. Probably the fairest comparison would be the Barcelona Marathon in 2018, where it wasn’t until the 4th kilometre that I was able to hit my target pace. Yesterday I wasn’t able to hit my target pace until the 8th kilometre, and there were plenty of kilometres after that where I lost time waiting for a gap to overtake slower runners ahead of me.
The organisation at the start of the Barcelona Marathon was much better, but what also helped was the fact we ran down much wider roads. The roads in Barcelona in general seem wider than in Rome, but the course also seemed to give consideration to practical elements as well as ticking off as many tourist destinations as possible. The Rome course by contrast seemed to want to just deliver a spectacular route, and then fitted in the practical elements where it could. So for example, at Barcelona refreshments were every 2.5km, which as a runner is perfect as it makes it really easy to plan ahead for which stations you will utilise and which ones you can skip. Rome didn’t have as many stations but still had plenty, however they were irregularly spaced. Occasionally there would be only a few hundred metres between stations, at other times it was a few kilometres. Whilst the information regarding this was available pre-race, what constituted a water station also varied. Sometimes it was a full bottle of water, at others it was a quarter of a cup.
So far it probably sounds like I didn’t enjoy the Marathon, which would be way off the mark because I very much did. Yet there was still a sense of frustration because this has the potential to be one of the best Marathons around, and a lot of the issues I’ve highlighted are really easy to fix. Few other locations can boast so many spectacular sights within a relatively small area, and once things had calmed down a little and I didn’t have to focus solely on where the gaps in the bunch were, I was able to take in those sights, all lit up by glorious sunshine.
The atmosphere was also excellent. There were plenty of bands along the route and spectators lining much of the route too, though my personal favourite was the DJs who seemed to have some impressive sound systems with them. There was one playing some Red Hot Chili Peppers which didn’t necessarily seem like an obvious choice for a Marathon but definitely a choice I enjoyed. There was also one playing Kanye West, who isn’t someone I generally choose to listen to but his Daft Punk sample on ‘Stronger’ brought back good memories of the original from University, and even prompted a burst of speed up a small hill.
Speaking of speed and coming back to the point I made at the start of this blog, normally the first kilometre won’t be the slowest of your Marathon. I lost a minute compared to my planned pace, but if you hit the wall, you’ll lose a lot more than that every kilometre. At Manchester in 2017, there was a 10km stretch where I was 1-2 minutes off my pace every kilometre. Even if you don’t fully hit the wall, fatigue will normally set in and you might find your splits slipping by 20-30 seconds per kilometre. Again, it doesn’t take long for that to add up to more than the minute lost at the start, and if you have to stop to use the bathroom, slow to take on some fuel or encounter a hill, your split will almost certainly be slower than that opening kilometre.
The fact that didn’t happen yesterday was firstly due to how long it was before I hit my target pace consistently. It’s quite easy to adjust your pace early in a run, but after you’ve been running for more than an hour, your body wants to maintain that tempo. You can force yourself to lift your tempo, but I decided not to do that yesterday, as there is always the risk of raising things too much. After all, when you’ve still got 30-35km to go, running that at faster than your planned Marathon pace will be difficult even on completely fresh legs, and even more so after more than an hour’s running, even if that was at an easy pace.
I also had to consider the weather. Forecasts even up until yesterday morning were predicting it would be relatively cool until about midday, however that wasn’t the case. The sun broke through before the Marathon started and temperatures soon picked up, peaking at more than 20C. That’s not extreme heat, but a lot hotter than I’ve been running in recently, and I’ve struggled in pretty much every Marathon I’ve done where the temperature has exceeded 20C. I knew the best way to combat that was to take things easy for as long as possible, which is exactly what I did.
That led to a bizarre period of the Marathon between 36km and 40km. Those are normally the kilometres which hurt the most, where you are using every trick in the book to motivate you to get to the finish. Yesterday they were my four fastest kilometre splits. We were amongst some tall buildings so I’m not convinced my GPS was entirely accurate – I noticed the discrepancy between the distance on my watch and the kilometre markers on the road jump noticeably in that section – but even if they weren’t all quite as fast as they appear on Strava, I was definitely running quickly. A little too quickly perhaps as the final few kilometres, including the ‘bonus’ kilometre on my watch (which clocked the run at 43.3km) were a bit more of a slog, but by that point the finish I was content to just coast into the finish.
Would I return? Probably not. Marathons overseas are an occasional thing for me, and I can’t foresee doing any of them twice. Would I recommend it? Yes, but with the caveat that you should prepare for the organisation to not be the best and plan around that if you want a fast time. And if you aren’t worried about chasing a fast time, then there aren’t many Marathons which can offer the type of sights which Rome can offer.
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