07/70: Marathon (moderate)

Today was marathon day. A colleague wanted to run his first marathon and he convinced me that it would be nice for me, too. I said okay, actually, when I am doing my long rúns of my own I hardly get 30k in, so would be a good occasion to get a really long run in ;-)
On Friday we (= my wife, the two kids, my colleague, his wife, and his kid) drover to the forer capital of Germany, Bonn, to visit a freind. On Sunday we continued to drive to the frontier Germany-Netherlands: Kevelaer. The marathon in Kevelaer is happening on a flat 6k loop. The number of runners is limited to 333. So, this is more a small marathon but (as I recognized) with a great atmosphere. Saturday's weather was pretty bad, rainy and heavy wind. On marathon day it was better, no rain, but pretty sunny, around 8 degrees Celsius but still for some parts of the loop heavy wind. But for a January marathon these are great conditions!
I started with a group in a 5:00/km (8:00/m) pace. I stayed with them for half of the distance and got a half marathon split of 1:46:30. After the half marathon mark I accelerated slightly to a split of 1:35:00 (4:30/km resp. 7:12/m) for the second half, i.e. my total time resulted in a 3:21:28 and ranked 41 overall and 7th in my age group.