Generali München Marathon 2021
A look back at the training that got me here, and where next from here.
For some quick #throwback reference, this was some of my thoughts a year ago when I attempted the Virtual London Marathon 2020.
For this post, it’ll be mostly about my own training experience, but mixed in with some reviews of the course as well, in case you’re looking at joining this race in the future too. All in all, this was a very well organized race, had great atmosphere, and certainly should be on top radar for Germany races. It is also a gold labelled race, so from the organization perspective, one does not have much to pick on.
Race course profile
The Munich Marathon is known to be a flat course, with a CR of 2.09, although it hasn’t been re-written for 20 years. The iconic part about the course is of course that it starts and ends in the Olympic Stadium for the Munich Games in 1972.
COVID probably brought about the decision to have a 2-lap course for the Marathon, instead of the original route. We basically ran over 20km of the same route, starting together with the Half Marathon runners, and going for a second lap. While i thought initially this might be somewhat “boring”, it actually turned out to be a boost mentally since I’ve already been through the first lap and pretty much could visualize what the route for the 2nd half of the race was going to be — something very important from the mental perspective.
Background/How this came about
It had been quite an uneventful race calendar for me since 2020 came about. My first intended Marathon at Taipei Wanjinshi in Mar 2020 was postponed, then cancelled. Local COVID restrictions in Singapore have made sporting activities fairly hard to make a comeback. We had some luck/chances with our Shufflers’ Time Trials (TTs), but it was only for 10k/HM. I had earlier achieved my PBs on those distances, but was keen to test my body against the marathon distance again.
With the border closed shut until Sept 2021, it was fairly hard to envision travelling just for a marathon, although a hope was lit when the Vaccinated Travel Lanes were announced in mid-Aug 2021. Of course, having seen the Hong Kong Air Travel Bubble with SG being postponed twice, and eventually cancelled, it was hard to predict if the VTL would stay true the course to implementation a few weeks after its announcement.
In any case, I got pretty excited at that news and decided to search around for some Germany marathons that were still about to take place. I recall the Generali Berlin Half was one of the mass running events that made a comeback, and that likely set a good model for how running events could make a return. But by the time the first VTL took off, my initial list of 3 potential events (Dusseldorf, Cologne, Munich) had only dwindled down to the one and only, Munich.
Being cautious, I waited a while more for the official confirmation from the race organizers that they had received the approval from the Munich authorities for the permit to get the race going.
Training leading up to race
Now — I would say that one of the more annoying things without certainty of the race is really when to time in the important training sessions — which in this case for the marathon was almost certainly going to be the Long Run (LR).
Truthfully, before the VTL news even broke out, I was just doing 20/21ks for my LR (1st column of picture above), since there was really hardly any motivation to go any further than that. My mileage was healthy too, but the presence of a LR was quite different from without it. In any case, the news of VTL prompted me to ramp up the LRs a notch, which then led to the 3 weeks that followed (24k, 24.5k, 25k @ ~5.15min/km).
Of course, on the week following my decision to go for the marathon, I started to go even further, with the two crucial weeks where i first did a double LR (20k on Monday, and 30k on Friday), and the following week (32.2k/20mi) which really provided me with a lot of confidence.
Part of the improvement in fitness came about as ~70km became more of a staple for me, and I noticed my MAF (Max Aerobic Function) runs becoming faster and at a lower HR. For reference, it used to be always at the higher 140s or even low 150s when I did 5.30min/km runs but this dropped to the 130s as I came towards the closing stages of this marathon prep. My 30 and 32.2k LRs were also fully within the MAF HR range, while executing them at ~5.15min/km pace.
Of course I also eventually managed to hit the 80km mark twice right before I started my tapering, something that I’ve never accomplished before. Certainly nothing impressive from a seasoned marathoner perspective, so I know that it’s only going to be a good base for me to build up for the next #sub3 attempt. What I’ve also realized in this training cycle was that the LR really put in a lot more mileage to the week. Especially on the week where I had put in 2 LRs, I was really under almost no pressure to put in much runs to hit a 80km mileage. This could be one of the strategies as I might get more time-strapped in my new job next month — really putting in the training sessions where it counts, because the quality of the sessions would also matter significantly to maintaining and improving the fitness.
Hydration/Nutrition Strategy
So this was something that I did not anticipate. At Berlin, there was a huge race expo, and I could get in a range of gels that I brought along with me during the run (including GU which I use most frequently).
This time, I only had 2 GU gels, and was intending to buy the other 3 at the expo. Unfortunately, there was no sales of gels at the expo!! [Separate note, i also couldn’t find running gloves here, which made me panic but thankfully i got cheap gloves at H&M which served this purpose very well]
So, I had to make do with the only gels that I could find at a sports store in Old Town. Kris, my shuffler teammate who was also in town to do the Half Marathon, had a spare Maurten GEL100 & CAF100 which he offered to me. Having heard of horror stories with how stomach may react to the caffeine in the gel, I decided to just take his offer and take the GEL100.
So I ended up taking my gels in this order:
Maurten GEL100 @ 7.5km
GU with Caf @ 14km
GU with Caf @ 24km
Powerbar Gel with Caf @ 32km
Powerbar Gel @ 39km
As the aid stations were spaced out quite well between each other, I didn’t have a hard time thinking of when to take in the gels. They were mostly taken with a “break” of water/isotonic in between. I tried to reduce the intake of water as I wasn’t really sweating much, and I had early signs of a mild stitch forming, so I just made little sips which gave me a great psychological boost.
Truthfully, the 39km gel might not have been necessary given I was already at the very closing stages of the race, but it was at that moment in time that I was battling for the “A” goal and every little bit might have been important.. — more on that in the next section.
Thoughts during the race / Results
There was always some lingering doubt on how the race will turn out — given the shortness of time that I had to prepare for this race and how certain things didn’t turn up as I had intended (for e.g. having to fight with the jetlag since arriving in Germany). Additionally, not having done sufficient Marathon Pace workouts also made me have some second thoughts about whether my legs will be able to sustain this throughout the entire journey.
Thankfully, my legs prevailed, and I had managed to finally break through my 6-year PB last achieved at Chicago 2015: 3.44 (Fun fact — this year’s Chicago Marathon actually happened on the same day as Munich)
As I was going about the race, i honestly was just focusing on each km at one time. I was quite reliant this time on what the watch told me my pacing was, given based on the GPS readings. Unfortunately, I didn’t do that much training runs at the 4:30min/km pace so it really didn’t come to me as second nature. Admittedly, I was quite distracted by the additional distance I had run because of GPS error/not running in a straight line. I was trying not to let the gap of when my watch beeped and me seeing the next km sign become too huge. Thankfully, this was kept to around 1min for most of the race.
I knew I had a tendency to quicken my pace when I was in contact with the cheering crowds (who doesn’t right?) Therefore, I had to regulate my pace and it was great that in the second lap I knew that we had around 10km within the English gardens, which allowed me to take things a bit more chill there after having picked up the pace with the cheering crowds. (This was especially so as I had passed by the elite runners running the German Marathon Championships during the second lap towards the park)
As Justin had helped me analyze, and painstakingly calculate.. my 5k splits for the entire race were actually very consistent, and all within a very narrow range.
22.40, 22.36, 22.53, 22.32, 22.32, 22.32, 22.47, 22.32
So revisiting the goals I had set for myself this race: I would be content with a sub 3:15 (~4.37min/km), whereas I would work towards a sub 3:10(~4.30min/km).
During the race, I had seen most of my km splits return at the low 4.30s, which gave me hope that I was closer to the ‘A’ goal. As late as 38/39km, I was still fairly uncertain if my legs “feeling good” would persist all the way till the end. This definitely made me hesitate on trying to increase my pace to try and hit the sub 3:10 goal.
It was only really at the 41km mark, where I saw that I was at around 3.05.30, which I thought to myself I had to give this last bit a push. Definitely helped that there was a crowd lining up around the perimeter to enter the Olympic Stadium and gave much cheers — as I really picked up the pace to try and attempt this. Alas, I missed it slightly, by 7 seconds, but that essentially wrapped up the 4.08 last 1.1km.
This last bit of push also really helped me to really bank in the negative splits for the second HM. I could already feel my pacing getting slightly faster (~2s each km) as I retraced the course for the second time, but this final sprint was the crucial game changer.
1st HM — 1.35.35
2nd HM — 1.34.31 (-1.04)
After I ran past the finish line, the wave of emotions really hit me hard. Had some difficulty breathing (not from the sprint) but just really letting the news sink in that I had done this — all of the hard work coming to fruition.
What’s next?
Well, certainly the next step would be to properly build up and try to attempt the sub 3h marathon. It’s of course no easy feat: having to run at 4.15min/km for the entire duration. Additionally, though the official listed requirement to apply for the Boston Marathon is a sub-3h, many times the actual requirement would be significantly lower than that.
But for now, I shall try to train up and build up towards a crack at the sub-3h barrier for a spring marathon next year. Hopefully having a much carefully crafted plan based on the gold-standard which is the Advanced Marathoning book that I’ll make more careful reference to, particularly those of the LR workouts (I certainly need to start infusing some Marathon Pacing for my LRs now to give me the fitness confidence).
Thanks
Wouldn’t have been able to do this feat without these few groups of people:
1. Justin, for being the OG #1 person that I talked proper marathon training to back in Dec 2019 —and for always sharing training tips from his own #breaking3 attempt. Of course, for doing the fantastic job of IG takeover and sharing the live race updates with friends. Fun fact: He even mapped out the original Munich Marathon course on Strava to help me analyze the elevation!!
2. Yik Siong, for accompanying me on the final 3 LRs (30k, 32.2k, 19k). Also one of the many people that I look up to a lot — having the strong discipline to train and having walked the path of gaining fitness that we can emulate from.
3. Anna and the Shufflers’ whom I’ve been training with for the past 1.5 years. Prior to the Shufflers’ I have never done track workouts, so I’ve never systematically pushed myself to the “threshold” limits that have helped me break all of my PB in all distances today.
4. Support from my girl, family and colleagues, for trusting in me to pull this trip off safely and successfully. There were many doubts on whether this could be realized, but they kept their faiths and allowed me to exercise my judgement.
While the main intention for my post is to really chronicle my own progress over this time, I hope that it could also potentially inspire my fellow runners to grab the racing opportunities that may arise in time to come, as we slowly resume mass running again :)
