Walk on Water

Last Saturday saw me running on water!
During my long slow distance run (and still recovering from last weeks half marathon) I was running with smartphone. A bit of music on my earphones and Runkeeper to track the route. This route shows I can run on water, of the coast, on the Northsea;-)

Well, last time I checked I did not have these powers so what happened here? Of the beach in front of the little town of Ter Heijde a artificial Island is constructed. A so called sand engine. The idea is that the sea will distribute al this sasn along the coast in the years to come so the Netherlands can stand a bit more of global heating. Google maps, used by Runkeeper, only shows the very early stages of the construction. The image below shows you what this sand engine looks like at the moment;

Bron: http://www.kleinockenburgh.nl

Endurance: Haile Gebrselassie

A film on Hailes live from before his marathon achievements: Endurance in 8 parts from youtube:
Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6:

Part 7:

Part 8:

Haile Gebrselassie Revealed

On the day Haile reveals he will not participate in the olympic marathon next summer here the CCN documentry 'Haile Revealed' in 3 parts.

Part 1: Haile and his role in the ethiopian society
Part 2: Haile his background

Part 3: Haile and the 2007 marathon of Berlin

How long is the City Pier City Half Marathon?

In my previous post I wrote on the Jones Counter, used to measure the distance of marathons. The article mentioned in this post states that every road races is a bit longer than the official distance.

Today I entered the route of the CPC run of last sunday in Runkeeper using google maps.

An acurate analysis of this map will show that I placed the start a couple of metres to much towards the sea. And for the finish line? I think it was a bit more further down the bicycle path along the 'Malieveld'.
Even with these alterations that shorten the route Runkeeper stops at 21 kilometres and 400 metres.

Of course do not take these figures for granted but it would be nice te learn from the organization what the actual distance is that is covered by the CPC-run according to their official measurement.

Wanna know more on the CPC run? Read my review!

Runkeeper has also two routes logged using GPS last year on a slightly different route. They are 21.04 and 21.11km. This can be explaned by the fact that GPS draws straight lines between everymeasurement. This will shorten routes run on a track with lots of bends and curves. Try for example a twisting and turning track in the woods were you might loose some of the waypoints due to bad reception of the GPS signal.

How to measure 42.195 metres for a marathon

On the eve of the 2008 marathon of Rotterdam one of the Dutch new papers published an article on the technique used to measure the route of the marathon  (article in article in PDF).

What we learn from this article is:

1. A marathon is usually longer than 42.195 kilometre. 
2. It is measured with old fashioned low tech

Why is a marathon longer? In case the winner runs a world record the track is measured a second time. To avoid that the track is not long enough one meter is added on every kilometre!

On top of this; most runners will not run the ideal line. The elite runners as well run probably a couple of 100 metres extra.

The low tech devise used to measure the distance is a very simple but effective devise called the Jones-counter. This is connected to the wheel of a bicycle.

Silver Cup first Olympic Marathon up for sale?

For those marathon runners with olympic ambitions but not enough talent there is an other option available to obtain a 'gold medal'.

When the first marathon was run in 1896 it was won by the Greek Spyros Louis. The prize for him winning this approximately 40k run from Attica to Athens was a silver cup. This is put up for auction and to raise an estimate of between $188,500 to $251,300 taccording to Reuters.

The grandson motivates the sale that cup cannot be devided among his two children. Another reward Spyros Louis got for winning the first olympic marathon is that his name is given to the new olympic stadium when Greece hosted the 2004 games.

Very fast edition of the CPC half marathon

Kibet op de finish (Bron: ANP via de Gelderlander) 

The top comes close to worldrecord
About a week ago I posted the claims of both Jonathan Maiyo and Geoffrey Kipsang to go for the world record on the half marathon in The Hague today.
The winner was Stephen Kibet in a time of 58.54 only 21 seconds short of the track record of Samuel Wanjiru in 2007 (at that time the world record). The current world record is  58.23 (Zersenay Tadese).

Fantastics day
Despite the fact we did not witness a world record the race was superb. The weather was almost spring like. For more details on the CPC read my review.

Afterwards: everything is gone!

before: still quiet at the start line

My own run

Only a few second short of my won PB run three years ago I am very satisfied. Not the least because I improved my PB at 5 and 10 with 16 and 12 seconds. Only 3 second decline in 3 years at the finish line is good with me.
The highlight? My wife and daughter a few 100 meters before the finish line and the high five with my daughter. Just the kick you need for the final few hunderd meters. 

Below a report from dutch television: