As mentioned in my last post<\/a>, I\u2019ve done two main practice runs to prepare for the marathon. The first one was the Barcelona half-marathon<\/a>. My objective was very clear: to run it in less than 1 hour 20 minutes. It was an ambitious goal, especially now that my training is more geared toward the marathon, where endurance is more important than strength (to achieve my half-marathon goal, I would need both).<\/p>\n My strategy was to complete the first half in 37 minutes 30 seconds and run at a more relaxed pace for the second half. My time at the halfway mark was 37 minutes 30 seconds. Everything was going fine until km 19, when my legs stopped working. I simply ran out of gas, and my brain told my body \u201cEnough already, no big deal if you can\u2019t finish.\u201d Thanks to my friend Juan, who gave me a pep talk that appealed to my drive for self-improvement, I remembered that, when you feel that you can\u2019t go on, you still have 50% left in your gas tank. I decided to let up a little bit, and to my surprise, I realized that the group that I was running with wasn\u2019t that much farther ahead. I told myself: it\u2019s now or never. I buckled down and managed to cross the finish line at 1 hour 19 minutes 38 seconds.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a picture of my friends, Jorge and Alex and me after the race. You can see happiness and suffering reflected in our faces. Jorge is an MBA classmate. Talking with him and other classmates is a great reminder of the MBA candidates we once were and how we focused our energies during the different stages of the application process.<\/p>\n![\"Running](\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/mba\/files\/2016\/03\/Post-3-pic-1.jpg\")
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![\"Running](\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/mba\/files\/2016\/03\/Post-3-pic-2.jpg\")
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