Chapter 329 The Major Marathons 3
"That"s right, we always hope that maybe a record could be broken in a big marathon like this, and this year can really be possible because the best marathoner in the world today is partic.i.p.ating in this marathon today."
"With Jake Smith taking part in this race today we can expect him to perhaps win this marathon like almost every marathon he has partic.i.p.ated in the last few years, this year Jake is 18 and still very young as an elite athlete so maybe he can still dominate the world of marathons for many years."
"He sure is the best marathon athlete today, but I don"t expect him to win today"s marathon, not even two weeks since he partic.i.p.ated and won the NCAA tournament final at college basketball."
"Plus, with college basketball season being so hard and so many games I don"t think he had time to train for marathons, so I think this time he could lose."
"We"ll have to follow today"s marathon to see what will happen, after all, we have several talented athletes partic.i.p.ating in today"s marathon who can win even if Jake is running well."
Soon the marathon started and Jake started running at his pace and tried to find several athletes who were running at the same pace as him at the start of the race to save his stamina and use less energy.
The winner of this marathon in his past life was António Pinto from Portugal with a great time of 2:07:55 which is less than 2 minutes from the world record that Jake achieved at the end of last year, so Jake would have to go well if he wanted to make sure the victory.
Jake was confident because his stats were better than the last marathon he ran in with a great time and contrary to what commentators said he didn"t stop training even while playing several games in the season.
Over the past few months, Jake has learned a few things from Coach Davis, how he should move his arms and breathe while running to save more energy and some tricks for him to use in marathons.
Since Jake ran a marathon every day he trained, it was much easier for him to learn these things while training almost every day. In training, Jake had already confirmed how these things helped him after running many km.
The pace of the runners in London was good for the first few km and Jake could always find athletes near him so that he could save some stamina unlike US marathons, but there were no runners who wanted to run along with Jake in this marathon.
Runners in America did this to help him in the marathon and because everyone knew Jake always had a great running pace and elite athletes just had to gain by running along with him, but in London, it wasn"t like that and Jake had to always find other groups to run.
After 15km of running it was harder for Jake to find groups of athletes running at the same pace as him and having to run more alone, Jake didn"t know the race route either because it was his first time running in London and so he lost a lot of energy in the wrong places running alone.
"Jake has been running at a strong and steady pace as always and in this marathon, he can"t find many athletes running at the same pace as him, plus this is Jake"s first time running in London so he may not get a good one time and win."
"That"s right, these are problems he doesn"t normally encounter running in America and Jake comes from a tiring season of over 35 basketball games and may not have the stamina to finish this marathon in a good time in today"s marathon."
Jake and Eva"s friends were also watching this marathon to follow Jake"s marathon and had the same concerns that commentators had, everyone was worried that the same thing happened in New York and Jake finishes the hurting race.
Only Coach Davis and Zack who accompanied Jake"s daily training were quiet watching the marathon and not caring what the commentators said, Jake ran a greater distance than this one day faster after the games, so it was. It was impossible that he could not bear to run in London.
Jake wasn"t worried about any of this either and just ran quietly trying to do everything he could to keep going well, what happened in New York was many years ago and since then Jake had a lot more stats and had no problem finis.h.i.+ng a race like this same with all the odds.
But Jake was already thinking as he ran that he probably wouldn"t race in London again for many years, maybe many years later he could race again, but after earning the rewards of the system if he won this marathon he would rather keep running in America.
After pa.s.sing the 25km race Jake was already leading this race and those running in front of Jake before had already lost a lot of stamina and we"re getting further behind during the marathon.
Jake learned from his mistakes before and whenever he could stop at the watering stations, Coach Davis told Jake several times how important it was to stay hydrated during such a long run.
After pa.s.sing 30 km Jake was still running at the same pace and was already far ahead of second place in this marathon, at this point Jake didn"t even look as tired as he was in every marathon he ran.
Anyone who saw Jake running might have thought it was easy to run a marathon at this speed, as it had been a long time since he had been running. Jake forgot to slow down and kept running fast.
"Jake still keeps the lead running at a very strong pace, he doesn"t even seem to be trying very hard to run this marathon and it"s been 30 km, honestly, I don"t see him as a tired person who has just been through a whole intense season of basketball."
"He really is the best athlete today and that no one can deny, so he can partic.i.p.ate in such a high level of two different sports and still win shows that he is different from other athletes around the world."
"That"s right, the Resistance that Jake has been showing these last few years is amazing and I think that"s the best gift he has, with this Resistance he can keep doing all that and maintain that top-notch performance."
"Let"s hope he keeps running well like this in today"s marathon and wins well and maybe can break some record as we"re hoping."
After driving the 33 km Jake had finally realized that he was still running at his normal pace, if he went on like this he would break his own world record and he didn"t want to do it in this marathon, so Jake started to slow his running pace a lot to finish this marathon at the time he wanted.
But for all that was left to finish the race everyone could see that Jake slowed his racing pace too much and even those watching on television could see, only Coach Davis and Jake"s friends knew he did it in every marathon and not They were very worried.
Jake was lucky to have the help of the system to calculate his running pace and the time he needed to run to finish the race at a certain time because it was because of this that Jake could control the way he ran and also run better keeping up a steady pace of running.
After pa.s.sing the 41km race Jake was still right in front of the other runners and only Antonio Pinto was closest to him in this marathon and yet everyone could see that Jake would still win this marathon quietly.
"What a great race Jake has today, we can see that he has already won this marathon and even though he has slowed his racing pace a lot over the last 10 km he can win much more easily because of that."
"That"s right, Jake really has to save on the marathon for the last few km because he"s tired of all of his game season games that ended just two weeks ago, this is Jake"s first marathon this year and he"s winning after winning the NCAA tournament this year too."
"Many said that because basketball was so much more important and could give Jake a lot more money, he would stop running marathons now that he was starting to get more prominent in basketball, but this victory shows how Jake never abandoned his training this year."
"True, it"s great to see a great athlete like him winning this marathon today because this marathon will be a piece of the story that Jake is building as an elite marathoner."
"We don"t know if Jake will keep running in other marathons this year, but we all hope he will continue and win some more."
After winning the London Marathon with the time of 2 hours, 7 minutes and 5 seconds Jake celebrated a lot because he was really happy when he won and even more so when it was a marathon he had never partic.i.p.ated in before.
So when Jake received the trophy for winning the marathon and the $ 100,000 prize, Jake talked to John for a while after that he was much happier than Jake with another marathon won.
John could even imagine Jake winning the 4 marathons this year after winning the ACC tournament and the NCAA tournament, sales of Jake"s sponsoring companies will increase a lot this year and Jake"s fame will also increase a lot.
Jake thanked John for the work he did in this marathon and asked John to prepare everything for the upcoming marathon in Boston.