Hamburg Marathon 2013

Hamburg Marathon 2013
running for Boston

First off, although I have not improved my time (PB) I felt a lot better running Hamburg than I did Frankfurt last year. For quite a few reasons, just a pity that my legs (more precisely my hamstrings) had other ideas, but I'll come to that later.
It was a great day for running! We had around 7°C at the start and at the end 15°C and sunny with a light breeze, which is probably one of the reasons why the route was lined with thousends of people, cheering as the runners went by, a brilliant atmosphere, making it a wonderful race regardless of time ran.
I got to the start line in quite good time and I got ready and gave my bag in with around 20 minutes before start, which I thought would be enough time to go to the toilet, but they just did not have enough porta-loos for the number of runners, I've been to a lot of smaller races that had just as many as at the marathon #fail! So with less than 10 min to go I made my way to the start area. Because of a strange construction I ended up in a start block further back, but as I wanted to start really slowly this time, it wasn't that important. just after the first km time for a pit stop, and judging by the number of people (men actually) stopping there were definitely not enough toilets at the start.
The first half went almost according to plan, about a min & half slower than planed, so ok.
Felling good I started to pick up the pace, as planed, and according to the official splits my km avg between 20-25km we as around 2 sec per km faster than the average, bingo. And the next 5K were also 2 sec/km faster than the previous 5, a feat I repeated in the next 5K and I was still feeling good :-)
So we have now just got past the 35K mark and well on the way to a good 3:20 ish or so, and looking to increase the pace again, but just after the 36km mark my left hamstring started pulling together, so I stopped and managed to stretch it before it had a chance to seize up on me. I kept this up for the next 2-3K, stopping, stretching, running, stopping, stretching, running. Untill it finally got better and I thought I had a chance of running all the way to the end, which would mean still coming in under 3:30. just past 41K take a right turn and then you have an uphill section about 700m long. Half way up, without any warning, my right hamstring just seized up on me, and with a scream I stopped on the spot, giving a spectator a bit of a shock.
The only thing I could do was keep touching my toes, a spectator offered me something to drink, but everytime I tried to take a sip my hamstring started cramping again. I don't really know how long I was there, around 800m from the finish line, but it felt like ages. After a while it felt better, and I was able to walk, after a few yards I started jogging and for the last 400m I ran for the finish line, and with every stride I felt my hammies, left and right, and prayed don't seize up on me now.
Was I happy when I crossed the line in 3:30:12 a new PB by 10 seconds :-)