Penultimate Entry

Hi Prague blog devotees,


Well, let me walk you through the run and the outcomes therein. We started off and it took about 3 1/2 minutes to get to the starting position. Not unusual in these circumstances. Harvey took the picture to the right showing me waiting to start and then ran around the corner and waited for me to come along before getting the second picture of me pulling out onto the bridge going north across the river.


Didn't really know how to dress for the day. Started off set up for a Canadian March 29th with multiple layers of clothing. Took off my fleece before I started but about 10 minutes in realized that the windbreaker was problematic so I stopped, de-pinned my number plate and RFID tracker and then reconstructed myself by tying the jacket around my waste and putting the number on my T-Shirt.

Probably had too fast a pace for the first 5 km. I was operating under a deficit of information as there was a gap between my watch and my actual starting time. A gap that got worse every time I went under a bridge and the watch lost satellitte signal. I somehow became convinced by the 10 km point that the difference was as much as 25 minutes and I guess the 2:51 for my last practice run stuck in my head so I thought I might be in trouble making the 3:00 time limit for the race. In any case, my pace by the 10 km point was closer to the 6:45 - 7:00 that I wanted but I was more tired that I should have been at that point. Saw Dieter and Harvey just shy of the 10 km water stop but no picture was successfully taken of anything other than my elbow so I shan't include it here.

By the time I got to 15 km I was feeling pretty good but shortly after that at around 16 km I started to feel the first edge of tiredness loop in and was really beginning to wonder about the difference between my watch and the real clock. At 18 1/2 km I did see a clock which indicated the gap was only 9 minutes, I was in good shape time wise so I decided to do a bit of walking to make up for some of the walking breaks I had skipped. Walked for 1 km, ran for a further 1/2 and then ran the last km across the bridge and to the finish line. Whew! Was I ever tired. Dieter and Harvey were there with a cold beer but I needed a glass of water first, drank that, started the beer and then grabbed an apple - best tasting thing I ever had, that apple.

After that, the rest of the day and evening went well. Just some quality time between some old friends.

As to the song of the race. well, at around the 8km point a favourite came up which may have been a song of the day before. This song is also liked by both my sons so I want to dedicate both it and the race to them. They have the capacity to do things in their lives which make this effort seem modest and humble. I have a great deal of faith in the future knowing that there are such young people as James and Andrew in it. The song is the Who's classic ode to the "wild lad" Dr. Jimmy from Quadrophenia.

The next and final posting to this blog will occur when I post a flickr slideshow on this whole experience sometime in the next week or so. I am also regularly posting to my full time daily blog at http://paul-mackin-daily.blogspot.com/ and would ask that you check there regularly for all sorts of fun stuff. In the mean time, I want to thank you all for participating. It has been a tremendous amount of fun for me and I hope for you as well.

Paul