From: BarryNL (barry@somewhere.nl)
Subject: Race Report: Egmond 1/2 Marathon
Date: 2002-01-13 11:25:23 PST

A short race report 'cos I'm still so tired... :-)

The Egmond 1/2 Marathon is run along the North Sea coast of the Netherlands
with about 7k actually along the beach. The first 3k is through the town and
although the streets were crowded the pace was reasonable. Then the route
hit the beach and the going became much harder - especially as I started
near the back and about 8,000 other runners had already churned the sand up
nicely. My splits along the beach were way down on what I'd hoped and the
hard going left me tired for most of the rest of the race. I still managed
to pick the pace up a bit once off the sand though and managed to keep up a
reasonable pace, even though my right foot started hurting badly through the
last couple of kilometers. The main problem with the route is that it's
quite narrow and you need to constantly change speed and weave about to
avoid other runners - especially as there is no starting based on estimated
finish time - I must have nearly run into the back of half a dozen people
who had started walking... I finally finished in 1:53:48 - which to show how
hard the course was, was 2984th of 6526 in my category (46%).

--
Regards, Barry
Running & Stuff: http://distancerunner.tmfweb.nl
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep; but I have training logs to keep; and
miles to run before I sleep".