Valencia Marathon 2025

I went to Valencia for good weather and a fast course. I'd run some of the highest mileage and best sessions I'd run in years. I was thinking that I was in 3h05 shape, but the plan was to start somewhere in a back third of my corral (3h-3h15 seed times), run with the pack, and then work my way forward.
I didn't actually check to see what my 5k splits should have been for a 3h05 race, so when I call out the splits, I have no idea whether I'm on pace or not. For a while, it felt like 5k splits around 22 minutes were manageable.
I'm not sure how to explain it, but from about 15k-30k, I simultaneously felt like things were difficult but also that I had to hold myself back from pushing too hard. I was both chomping at the bit and yet relying on mantras pretty early. the encouraging thing though is that I had the mental awareness to even use my mantras, and panicking during races and forgetting how to re-center myself has been an issue over the last year or maybe more.
But somewhere after 35k, the wheels started to fall off. Maybe it was 37k where my right hamstring, which has seized up once before during this training block, seized up again. I thought maybe I'd be marching in the rest of the way when someone who recognized me gave me encouragement and wouldn't let me walk anymore. We ran together pretty much for the rest of the race.
The kilometers between 35 and 41 feel very long, and I got more race than I bargained for. The the last k, the race starts counting down every 100m, which I appreciated. Running on the blue carpet was lovely. there's actually two sections of it: one for a downhill, then some cobblestone, and then more blue carpet across the water. It was a lovely rush of adrenaline, and I felt like I could finally run again (at least for that last 200m or so).
I crossed the line with a chip time of 3:11:08. Not a great time, given how well my training went. But, it was a time that reflects that I took a risk and tried to run to the full extent of my fitness. The risk just didn't pan out as I outran myself a bit too early.

disclosures: I went to Valencia on a bib provided by Sports Tours International. This isn't the video that they're paying me to make, and no other brand has paid to be mentioned or shown in this video.

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