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S Silvestre do Porto 2014!

Manuel Marques December 31, 2014 No Comments Uncategorized Porto, race, running, S Silvestre

And it is done, yet another S Silvestre! This year I was quite fortunate to have been able to train with the guys from my home club for a week and a half before the actual race, which was good fun (and we have a lot of big climbs on the banks of the river to practise our hill running!).

I ended up with pretty much the same time as last year (around 43:30 for 10k) which wasn’t stellar, and to be absolutely honest I think I was overly conservative with my effort – the first climb went on OK, but after it I let myself fall behind a bit. Furthermore, running downhill is not one of my best skills, hence I kept being overtaken there 🙂

Still, it was a nice race to finish the year properly, with the bonus of a post-race meal at our local Pizza Hut – featuring an obscene amount of pizza which made the race feel like piece of cake compared to finishing that very last slice!

And… done!

Manuel Marques September 16, 2014 No Comments Uncategorized personal, race, running

Already completely recovered from this past Sunday, which is surprisingly good! (today I’m already going out for a “light” training session, just to get the blood flowing)

Me and my half-marathon partner Diogo. Here we were about 5k to the finish line!

The race was great, weather-wise it was a bit dodgy at first with some thunderstorms and the skies blackening up but when the time came the weather actually cooperated! Only a little breeze and relatively cool temperatures (esp. when compared to last year, although it did not prevent me from having some fantastic tanlines – see below!). This year I did most of the 21.1k accompanied by one of my rowing buddies (he did push a bit further at the end) which helped keeping the pace constant. We were averaging about 4:27/km during the first half of the course, dropping slightly to 4:28/km in the end which enabled an overall time of 1h35m01s (656th out of about 4400: not bad!) – more than 12′ less than last year!

I’m very happy with this, although this now means that the stakes are now much higher for next year – I need to go under 1h30m! 🙂

10669172_703902109685543_1220004067093676416_o — Here we are, more than ready to do those 21k!

Later on I’ll be having a very well-deserved francesinha with all the people that have trained with me. And this coming weekend we have our annual river descent, so I’m very looking forward to that too. And then… I say goodbye to Portugal, as I’m only back for Xmas (and S Silvestre… 🙂 ). Definitely a good send-off, and I am now fully energised for another term of research and teaching!

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