Only three days!!!

Well, it's here. The marathon has arrived!! I can't do anything more, just wait!! Today I have done my last run: 9,3 km (5,7 miles) at 5:15 pace (8:25 in miles).

After thinking about it, I have already decided the strategy of my first marathon: I will try to do 3:45 time. I will begin slowly (I know the first half is a bit harder than the second one, even if the differences aren’t very important): I will try to do the half marathon in 1:52-1:54 and look until km 35 to see how I feel. After that, do as I can!!

I will run at the beginning with some friends of the Garabitas Group, people that I usually run on Sundays. They have told me they want to have my same pace, let’s see.

I feel OK, a bit nervous, but OK. 

Less than five days!!

After several months preparing it, the D day is coming!! My first marathon is here!! Madrid's Marathon is waiting for me!!

I think now I'm living those previous moments of passion and good feelings before the race that I've heard about in so many times: I know I have done all my homework for the last four months, lots of hard trainings , most of them alone, some of them in the cold, always between Spain and Portugal: It wasn't easy for me, but I'm here, and I'm proud of it!!

And now, I have to think about how I'm going to run the race: which strategy will I make in place? Should I try to finish in a special time? Or will I have to run without looking the time, being my first marathon race??

I have some days to think about it.

Flying home...

It's Friday and as usual I 'm flying home in a few hours. I'm not very happy because I was supposed to be today in Madrid talking with people from my company about our future. So I should have traveled yesterday night, sleeping one night more at home. At the end they cancelled my meeting so I didn't fly yesterday as planned.

So we have to continue waiting to know what happens to us. I'm a bit fed up with this situation: now we still can't reserve the school for next year for our children, because we even don't know in which city we are going to live!!

I hope it will be possible to reserve the school places even later. If someone has any information about that for Chicago or Austin, it will be very helpful to us.

Well, it's better not to think about that, because we can't do anything, so it's not useful to worry about it.

Talking about running, my training is ending, next week is my last week before the race. I presume that this week I will get nervous before my first marathon. I have some experience running half marathons, but not the whole one. I think I have done my homework, but you never know how your body is going to function during the race. Let's see...

On the picture, Fuengirola at night from the varanda of my grandfathers appartment. 

Memories from those days...

Well, normally this happens to me: after some intense days, enjoying life with my family it's hard to me to recover the rhythm of normal life.

Still today I'm thinking about all memories of those days spent in Fuengirola with my family. We had a beautiful time all together on the beach, specially our kids. As every father, I feel really great seeing my kids having fun, and those days they had fun almost every time.

So, after those days, it's even harder to separate from my family and coming back to Portugal, keeping my family in Madrid. Even more those days because my wife had a surgery last day (everything was OK) and I wasn't there.

We knew (and we continue thinking the same way) that these was the best decision for the family, because, without knowing our future destination, It didn't make any sense to move for another different town in Portugal (due to the children school), and some months later, have to leave Portugal. So we decided to send the family to our original town, Madrid, just waiting and see what would happen.

Now, we are close to know where we will go, but even it seems we will go to the United States, it's still not decided the project, and the city. So, everything can still happen.

In my near future I have some conversations with my company to discuss about that. Let's see.

And the marathon is coming!!! 

Good Easter holidays...

After some days off, I'm back again. We have been in Fuengirola, in the south of Spain: a beautiful summer place, with great beachs and lovely ambience. It's a tipical touristic place with all you need to spend a great time.

And, of course, you can eat some fish "cooked" on the boat!!

It's really nice to go together all the family, the children enjoyed a lot those days, going late to bed and having fun all the time.

And I could manage to train as I had planned, even more!! This week I have run 82 km (51 miles), more than ever!! And the last Sunday, was 25,7 km (+/- 16 miles). And the marathon day is coming...

Madrid's monument: Real Madrid's Stadium

The other day, while I was running the Madrid's half marathon race, I noticed we had to run crossing in front of the Real Madrid's Stadium: The Santiago Bernabéu, It's a bit impressive to see it, but I think it should be absolutely shocking to play inside with 100.000 people shouting!!

The Real Madrid soccer team is one of the best soccer teams in the world even if this year they're not doing a very good work.

As I can know, soccer is a non very popular sport in the United States, even if its importance is increasing year after year. In Europe and in South America is the king of the broadcasted sports without any doubt. And this summer, soccer will be the king of sports with the world cup in Germany. As usual, Spain will lose their possibilities in the begining of the champ...Even that, we will support the team!!

Madrid's half marathon: DONE

That's it. On Sunday I ran the Madrid's half marathon race. It was a quit hot day and I did a good race even that.

I ran the race in 1:36:20, 1:10 faster than the last half marathon race, in Getafe, so this is my new PR of the distance. I'm quit happy about the result even if I think that I could have done better, because I tried to run with the 1:35:00 group of the organization of the race, but I wasn't able to run so fast from PK 14 till the end. But considering the hills up and down and the sunny day, I am happy with my finishing time.

And now, just thinking in Madrid's Marathon in April 30th...