After setting what remains my marathon PR in Philadelphia in November 2015 just days before my 41st birthday, I lived in Greece during the first half of 2016 with my wife and son while I was on my first sabbatical. I still had a running coach back then, who recommended that I consider doing the Rotterdam Marathon while I was in Europe that Spring. As it happened, I decided instead to register for the Paris Marathon but got injured two weeks beforehand and couldn't run it, although we still went to Paris and had a nice time. But my coach had planted the idea of running Rotterdam in my mind, and the idea was still there when my second sabbatical was approved for this current Spring. I won't cross the Atlantic just to run a race, but living in Athens again this year gave me the opportunity to run Rotterdam without crossing more than a single time zone. So, two days ago on April 14, 2024, I finally ran Rotterdam and finished in 3:10:18, taking five minutes off the times of my previous two marathons. It was the fastest marathon I've run since my 3:09:43 at the Buffalo Marathon in 2019 and my fifth fastest overall after 20 marathons.
To compare apples to apples with my previous post on my previous marathon (Rehoboth), here's my weekly mileage for the 16 weeks leading up to Rotterdam: 40, 40, 31, 45, 32.5, 50, 44.5, 55, 50, 11, 36, 45, 55, 28, 48, 43 (race week including the marathon). Average: 40.9 miles per week.
That's almost exactly the same as the average of 41.4 miles per week that I ran before Rehoboth. Another similarity is that my training for both races was sidetracked for a couple weeks, but this time it happened much later in the cycle: 6 and 5 weeks before the race, which effectively led to a double peak build-up and a lighter than usual taper.
I think there are four factors that enabled me to run faster in Rotterdam than in Rehoboth. First, Rotterdam is simply a faster course. I haven't run Berlin or Valencia, but it's difficult for me to imagine a significantly faster course than Rotterdam. It's almost completely flat, with the only real elevation coming from a bridge that you run over twice: right after the start, and then from the other direction in mile 17. Plus the crowd support at Rotterdam is absolutely fantastic. I haven't run New York, but I have run Boston and I think the crowds in Rotterdam are at least as strong as at Boston. Names are printed on bibs at Rotterdam, and there was not a mile in the race when random spectators didn't encourage me by name at least once if not many times.
Second, I'm a bit further away from my hamstring injury now. Rehoboth was my first marathon back and I was still proceeding somewhat gingerly in training while doing hamstring exercises 2-3 times per week. But I actually stopped doing hamstring exercises in January when we came to Athens. That wasn't my plan, and in fact I plan to get back to doing them maybe at a lower level now that the race is over. But my hamstring has been fine during this whole build up and during the race. Plus, just having more training under my belt since taking time off with the hamstring tear helps, even if my training had been largely the same.
But in fact my training has differed in a couple ways. The third factor that I think enabled me to run faster is that I did more and better speedwork before Rotterdam than before Reboboth. Again, my hamstring held me back before Rehoboth particularly when it came to speedwork. But after Rehoboth I started doing shorter (400-800 meter) intervals in between threshold runs, and I think largely because of those shorter interval workouts my threshold runs tended to be ~10 seconds per mile faster after Rehoboth than they were before. My plan going forward is to emphasize speedwork over the summer before returning to marathon mode in the Fall, now that it seems my hamstring will let me, both because I miss running fast and because I think a 5k-10k focused block is key to setting yourself up for a good marathon cycle (as long as you also get enough rest). I don't think it's a coincidence that my threshold pace and my marathon race pace improved by roughly the same amount.
Fourth, the most important part of marathon training itself is of course the long run, and I'm a firm believer (sorry, I hate that phrase) that you need to be hitting your goal race pace regularly during long training runs. I just wasn't able to push the pace of long runs much before Rehoboth, but once this latest cycle really got going in early February most of my long runs featured at least some miles at the average pace that I ended up running in Rotterdam (7:16) or faster. The first couple were progression runs, then I did 5 x 2 miles on / 1 mile off with the on paces around 7:00 and off around 8:00. Then, after a couple easy long runs when I got sidetracked for a couple weeks, three weeks before the race I did 22 miles with 8 miles progressing from 7:18 down to 6:57. Even more of this would be better, but doing this sort of thing at all put me in a different league of fitness than I was in for Rehoboth.
During my last hard long runs it seemed that the sweet spot was somewhere around 7:10-15 pace. I could run sub-7:10 at the end of long runs but it would cause my heart rate to increase too much, which means that I wouldn't be able to sustain it in an actual marathon. So I went into the race thinking of 7:10 as a kind of speed limit at least during the first half. I planned to go out at 7:13 average, which is 3:10 pace minus a couple seconds per mile to correct for overdistance. My A goal was to beat my 3:09:43 at Buffalo in 2019, if I could pick it up a little in the second half. My B goal was to run 3:10, if I could just hang onto an even split. I didn't really think much about what to aim for next if 3:10 slipped away, but I definitely wasn't going to be happy unless I ran a good bit faster than 3:15.
Here is how the race transpired according to the mile splits recorded by my watch (which differ slightly from Strava):
Mile 1 - 7:05
Mile 2 - 7:10
Mile 3 - 7:10
Mile 4 - 7:13
Mile 5 - 7:10
Mile 6 - 7:10
Mile 7 - 7:12
Mile 8 - 7:10
Mile 9 - 7:07
Mile 10 - 7:09
Mile 11 - 7:06
Mile 12 - 7:07
Mile 13 - 7:12
Mile 14 - 7:08
Mile 15 - 7:08
Mile 16 - 7:13
Mile 17 - 7:18 (includes bridge)
Mile 18 - 7:09
Mile 19 - 7:15
Mile 20 - 7:12
Mile 21 - 7:10
Mile 22 - 7:15
Mile 23 - 7:24
Mile 24 - 7:35
Mile 25 - 7:29
Mile 26 - 7:29
Final .36 - 7:13
Finish - 3:10:18
As I mentioned, you cross a bridge right after the start in mile one, which takes you up and then down. I realized when coasting down the back side of the bridge that I had run up the front half a bit too fast. But no worries. After that I settled comfortably back to between 7:10 and 7:13 through 8 miles. I felt good and this was easy, as of course the first third of a marathon should be.
Then you can see that I picked it up a notch for the next 7 miles or so. Initially, I think the enthusiastic crowds just carried me a hair faster. But I was still feeling great and started thinking this might be a good day. Just as I was telling myself to stick to my plan through halfway, though, during mile 10 I was surprisingly passed by the 3:10 pacers. I knew they were running too fast and was telling some of the people following them that they were actually running 3:08 pace. But I figured that since I was feeling good I could afford to run along with them just a few seconds faster than my planned pace. Sure enough, I hit halfway in 1:34:03 (and I was well behind the 3:10 pacers at that point). The pacers briefly slowed down at halfway but then resumed their 3:07-8 pace. I felt so good through 15 or 16 miles that I had to talk myself into not running even faster until after 20 miles.
But it got harder before I reached 20 miles. The 3:10 pace group seemed to fall apart on the bridge in mile 17. I don't know what happened to the two pacers at the front of the group, but I never saw them again after the bridge. It turned out that there was another, smarter 3:10 pacer further back, who I saw going up the front end of the bridge. But then I pushed ahead down the back end of the bridge and didn't see that pacer again until the final kilometer of the race, when he passed me with a tiny handful of runners in tow. At that point I thought I was probably still going to finish under 3:10 and didn't worry about trying to stick with this little group.
The five miles after the bridge and before my pace slipped (18-22) felt harder and erased any idea of speeding up. But I still thought I could hold on and finish around 3:08-9, or maybe even 3:07 if I could somehow summon a kick at the end. Alas, it was not to be, though. The familiar marathon fade finally hit me in mile 23, and from then on it took everything I had just to continue running at all. I actually didn't slow down that much - less, in fact, than I did in Buffalo, where my fade occurred over 5 miles and peaked at 7:56 in mile 25. I haven't gone back and looked at the splits of every marathon I've run, but I may have faded less at Rotterdam than in any other marathon except my PR race, which is the only marathon I've managed to negative split. So I'm not kicking myself over it. I hung in there and ran 3:10. Beating my Buffalo time by running only 36 seconds faster really would have amounted to hitting it out of the park that day.
I can't think of anything to criticize about the Rotterdam Marathon, except maybe that like some other European races it started at 10:00am. Why such a late start? Otherwise, some other races might be as good in their own ways, but you really can't get much better than this. By the way, flying into Amsterdam and taking a train down to Rotterdam is super easy and fast. Ask me about it for details. I stayed at the Holiday Inn Express Rotterdam - Central Station, which is right by the finish line. The start line is a mile or so away, but I was definitely happy to see my hotel right after crossing the finish line.
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