Ascona-Locarno marathon
18th October 2015

What a great day… Around 1,600 athletes participated in this event, that included a 10 km, a half marathon and a marathon in this first edition of the Ascona-Locarno Marathon, in Ticino, Switzerland. This was my first marathon on “home” soil, organized among others by my former track and field team. It was nice to learn that my bib number, same as my birth year, was picked specially for me by the organizers. Nice personal touch!

The weather forecast wasn’t too promising, but on race day it was dry even though cloudy, about 12C, and, to my joy, there was absolutely no wind. The course was two loops through Locarno and Ascona, mostly flat (actually it was flat on the first loop, but it felt hilly in the second loop). I believe that it can be considered a fast course, obviously if you train for it, despite the many turne and the varied terrain (concrete, trail, pave). The marathon, with less than 200 runners, started at 10:00, ten minutes ahead of the half marathon, which meant that from 4 km onwards there was a continued passing of fast runners. While it was nice to see so many runners, their passing at a quicker pace was not great for trying to maintain my own pace. This meant that I ended up running the first loop too fast (59 min after 10 km and 2 h 7 min after 21.1 km). My brother, who was running the half marathon, was supposed to catch me at some point, but he didn’t because I was running significantly faster than planned. Obviously, I couldn’t keep up the same pace and faded a little in the second loop. The second loop was also made harder because there weren’t many runners and supporters left on the course. I was glad though to see many of my former track and field team mates and friends at the various aid stations, providing great personal support, which kept me going until the end. Also, it was an emotional moment to finish on the Piazza Grande, with many friends waiting there for me. Many of them were shocked to see me running a marathon, as they still remember me as the athlete that would run up to 400m on the track. It was a good atmosphere with the runners too: we were all high fiving and hugging after the finish. I was pretty pleased with my finishing time of 4:34:51, especially since I didn’t have much time to train for this marathon as my triathlon season only ended a few weeks earlier and also because less than two weeks ago I was spending a night at the emergency at Bedford hospital, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to recover on time for the race (I was a DNS at Great Eastern Run just a week ago).

Eva