Marathon Tel-Aviv 2010

This was my first road marathon and now I am wary of such: I just never ran on asphalt and now I can confirm that it is much more painful than running trails.

First of all I should say that the organization of Marathon Tel-Aviv was close to perfect, there was water more than every 4 km, there were 4 points with electrolyte sport drinks and three tables with apples/oranges.
I ran with a hand held bottle and had two gels in it's pocket, which in retrospect should have been 3, but this should remain as memo for the future. Otherwise, all went nice and easy until the sun got up and then it got hot! Every time I passed water station I poured another bottle on myself and from time to time refilled my bottle. The most challenging part was in the open sun after ~27km, but I were not chasing records -- just doing a long 4 hour run, so I slowed down and it was almost fine...

Actually my legs did not a bad work, but kept scaring me from time to time, as paranoid as I am nowadays, I walked every time I felt a familiar twitch in the calf, but who cares ;-)
The route can be seen at Garmin Connect, and there are some pictures at KodakGallery.