Hawkes Bay Marathon 2016

Ended up to be a very hard race. To be fair, Having coughing fit at 3oklock in the morning right up to racing day and not being able to even walk properly due to knee pain up to 3days before the race are clear enough indication how this race was going to go. But as a runner you tend to try to hang on to a little glimmer of hope in case all the problem magically disappear and everything come together on the race day. This was no the case for this race, unfortunately.
The day turned out to be a beautiful day. Looked a bit windy at first, but was not overly hot, at least in the morning. The organiser closed off the main street for the start and had a nice buzz of excitement in the air. Arrived at the start area with plenty of time to spare, so had a good relaxing warm up . Knee was not painful to run on, but definitely was  not 100%. At this stage, thought about 50-50 I would end up pulling out early in the race.
The gun went and everybody started to move forward. Actually, the start went quite smooth for a marathon of this size and I was into a good rhythm within 100m and first K's rap was 4.49. Surprisingly, knee was not giving me any grief at this stage and so I started to shift my focus for getting to the finish.Noticing heart rate was a bit too high for this part of race, eased up the pace a bit to bring the heart rate down and save legs for later part of race. Walked into the first aid at 5k as planned, but with the real race excitement, could not wait until the heart rate  to come down before getting back to run again. next 5k went smoothly, pace steady just over 5min/k pace and heart rate just over 170. Decided to take a little longer walk break at 10 K to bring the heart rate down.
After this the course changed from road to bike track.

With this surface change came the first sign of trouble; knee started to feel dodgy. It was not painful, but just enough discomfort to let me know it was not quite right. But everything else was absolutely fine , so just ignored the knee and pressed on. 15 K and 21K aid station came, and knowing next aid station was a bit farther at 28k, made sure heart rate was down to 150s before started the run again. At around 24K I started to feel the legs are getting a bit heavier. And then BANG! came the cramp on the back of right knee. When I think about it, I actually never had a cramp before while running. so did no know what to do with it. I stopped , stretched out the cramp. and started running again.Cramps just  kept coming back, so I had to reassess the situation quickly. At this stage I was pretty sure this marathon is over, but I was told at the start line to let somebody at the aid know if we were pulling out, so I decided to make my way to the next aid station slowly. On the way to the aid, I realised I could run if I ease up the pace to about 6min/k. So I just phoned up my wife to let her know what happened and my intention of trying to finish the race by going much slower and walk if necessary. I also told her to expect me at the finish around 4hour 30, instead of 3:30 I was hoping for. That done I switched my focus to getting to the finish line in one piece. Things got ugly very quickly and toward the end I was reduced to only 30seconds of continuous running before getting cramps somewhere in the body. (At this stage, even upper body was cramping up and I had to take the heart rate monitor off). Interestingly, almost all the runner around me was in pretty much the same state and runners were doing stretch all over the place. So my cramps may not have been due to my condition and might have been caused by the course. I don't know.There were a few runners even in the worse state and throwing up at the side of the road pretty bad. Looked like pretty tough day at the office.
Race itself was excellent. It was beautiful out there and locals were out in numbers and support from the crowed and aid station volunteer were just awesome! I enjoyed the experience even though my race turned out to be quite a tough lesson.
Finishing time 4hr 38 min