Race Information

• Name: Surabaya Isoplus Marathon
• Date: Oct 4, 2026
• Distance: 42.2 km
• Temperature: 26 degrees - 78.8 fahrenheit
• Humidity: 82%
• Location: Surabaya, Indonesia
• Website: https://isoplusrun.com/
• Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/20440363582
• Time: 3:17:18

Goals

Goal	Description	Completed?
A	3:15-3:18	Yes
B	3.18-3:22 (Fallback	Yes
C	3:24-3:28 (Hip Issues)	Yes
D	PB (3:37)	Yes

Splits

Kilometer	Time	Pace
0–5 km	23:56	4:47/km
5–10 km	23:40	4:44/km
10–15 km	23:21	4:40/km
15–20 km	23:11	4:38/km
20–25 km	23:04	4:37/km
25–30 km	23:00	4:36/km
30–35 km	22:36	4:31/km
35–40 km	23:32	4:42/km
40–42.x km	10:59	4:52/km

Background

I’ve been a hobby runner since 2017. In 2021 I got injured during the deload week of a HM and didn't run for the next 4.5 years.

In April 2025, I had a hip surgery for hip impingement + labral tear repair. I was able to slowly return to running and in October 2025 my monthly mileage reached 200 km upon return.

I spent the next 6 months building mileage and doing a lot of gym work for my hip rehab. At 14 months post-op I was able to run the 3.37 marathon, however I haven't been able to do any speed-work / LT sessions due to lingering stiffness and sharp pain that would occur whenever I tried to introduce faster stuff in training (8-12 months post-op).

Therefore, since April of this year I have only been running Zone 2.

--

Training

Earlier this year I made goals and schedule for the entire year. My goal was to run a sub 3:10 marathon and only to run 1 marathon for the year. Around February/March when I tried to include faster stuff in training it became obvious that my hips weren't ready for the task and needed more time. Because of this my training plan switched to running High Volume / Zone 2 only and to split the year into B and A marathons.

Between B and A marathons I only had 16 weeks in total. I had to carefully plan how I would recover from the marathon, build a serious block and enter the deload / taper phase. I didn't want to interrupt the progress with the marathon / recovering as my goal was to run higher mileage during the A block.

I got a lot of confidence from the 3.37 marathon where it finally felt like my hips could handle more serious training and speed workouts.

For the A block I wanted to include either 2 MP runs + Half race or 3 MP runs. The schedule on 6-10-12th weeks were to do 13-16-19 km MP runs inside 31 km zone 2 long runs. After the 2nd MP run of 16 km, I had a bit of lingering stiffness and I had to swap the 3rd MP session with a easy long run of 36 km (22 miles) and it was my highest week of 105 km (65 miles).

To summarize the key differences further:

	B block: 3:37	A block: 3:17
Carbs during Race	70 gr per hour	90 gr per hour
Post-Op	14 months	18 months
Speed-work - LT runs	2 painful LT runs early in the block	No
MP Runs	No	Yes - only 2
Peak 4 week average	81.6 km (50.7 miles)	95.2 km (59.1 miles)
Peak 8 week average	80.6 km (50 miles)	90.4 km (56 miles)
Hip Issues during the block	4 weeks consecutive	None
Race Note	Significant pace drop the last 4 km (lost 5 minutes)	Super strong execution

--

Nutrition + Caffeine Abstinence

3 months ago I wrote in this sub: aggressive fueling for the entire block. I'm gonna write another post to summarise the entire 3 months of fueling but I have basically treated every single long run as race nutrition practice and targeted 90 gr carbs per hour. Fueled every single run over 60 minutes regardless of the pace.

I'm someone that's been drinking 2-3 coffees a day for years. For the race I wanted to go through caffeine withdrawal period for 10 days, just so I could get the most out of the caffeinated gels during the race.

-- 

Pre-race

I’ve done the exact 12-10 x bodyweight per kg carb load on Friday and Saturday. Given the heat and humidity, I've targeted 4500 mg sodium on both days.

Had a 1 hour flight from Bali to Surabaya, arrived on Saturday morning and went straight to the race expo to pick up my bib. I booked a hotel 500 meters away from the start line and I can't stress enough how amazing this is.

Race start time was at 4 am, I slept at 10 pm the night before however I woke up at 12.30 and haven't been able to sleep. I assumed I would wake up at 3 am, skip breakfast and only eat 1 gel before the race. However I had unexpected time in the morning so at 2 am I ate 2 x GU basic gels (not caffeine or sodium heavy).

At 2.30, I started watching Modern Family on my phone in bed until 3 am and I slowly started getting dressed to do my warmup outside the hotel.

--

Race

NUTRITION / TEMPERATURE

Race temperature at start was 26 degrees (78 fahrenheit) with 82% humidity. The humidity being at 82% was actually one of the lowest I experienced for a race-day running in SE Asia. I had a proper water, gel, sodium plan for the race which I practiced more than 20 times in training.

For carbs I’ve targeted 90 gr per hour, this is a massive increase from the 70 gr per hour from the last marathon.

First gel was at 30 mins, next at 55 mins followed by every 20 minutes. In total I carried 11 gels, 8 x GU (some sodium heavy, some basic, some caffeine heavy) + 3 x KODA gels (90 mg caffeine each but also 29 gr carbs instead of the 22 of GU).

Took 3 x 215 mg sodium caps planned at 65-105-145 minutes but depending where water station would be around these time marks.

Total caffeine intake was around 440 mg, which is roughly 6 x bodyweight per kg.

--

RACE

This was a small event with roughly 400 marathon finishers compared to the 7000 of the previous one. I chose this race over the bigger Vietnam / Thailand races on the same date, because those are +90% humidity. I was also the only foreigner in the entire race.

My goal in this race was to target 3:18 and depending how my hips would hold up at 20-30 km marks, either to aim low 3:15 or fallback to 3:22 range.

My pacing strategy was to run 6 km at 4.50, 6 km at 4.45 and settle into MP of 4.40 from 12th km. I wanted to have an easy hour of running to allow my hips to settle into the rhythm rather than forcing a pace from the start which could be problematic for my hips.

1st 12 km - For me these KM marks were very important. I had to slowly settle into the race, give an easier hour of running to the hips and biomechanically assess how my hips were doing. There were no issues whatsoever and I slightly had faster splits than planned 4.45 from 6th to 12th km. Around 9-10th km, my HR monitors strap keep falling down below my chest (new strap that I haven't been able to properly adjust for a week). At 12th km it completely fell out of my chest and I had to toss it away.

12th to 20th km - Settled into my planned pace of 4.40, this felt quite easy and I very comfortably started hitting 4.38s with a lot of energy in the legs. This section of the course from 1st to 20th km were pancake flat.

20th to 25th km - This section overall had a slight elevation of 20 meters and an underpass. I actually really enjoy the hills because I train in a hilly area. I ended up dropping 2 others I was running with for 2 km's.

25th to 30th km - This was the return of the exact route of the previous 5km. This meant 20 meters downhill overall and a chance to pick up the pace. Another runner caught up to me and we started running side by side hitting 4.35s the entire way. It was actually so much fun running with another person and sticking to the pace. We didn't share a single word but had an unspoken agreement to run the same 4.35 pace.

30th to 36th km - This was a big pre-race decision making mark to assess how I was doing in the race. I still haven't had a sign of fatigue or slowing down so I started pushing low 4.30s from here. The other runner couldn't run with me anymore and I started running solo until the road merged with the +6 minute joggers from half marathon.

Surprisingly I felt very strong and kept pushing the pace every km while focusing on my nutrition and water stations.

36th to end - At 36th km I would say overall fatigue was at 6/10, however at 39th this all of a sudden became 9/10 fatigue and it was also unbearable. 38th had my last caffeinated energy gel for the race, but it didn't change the reality that was coming a KM later. From 39th, I didn't even look at my splits anymore, I was running to survive and to finish. I kept repeating "only 15 minutes left", "10 minutes left", "just 5 more minutes" and I just continued running without significantly dropping off the pace. I ended up averaging just under 5 minutes for the last 3 km's.

I finished Top 10 in 3:17:18, time that seemed like a miracle when I first ran my marathon 9 years ago. I didn't get any age category awards because awards were only for Indonesians (not a big international race).

--

Post-race

I would have never guessed how strong I would be running and how perfect things went during the race. On my 2nd MP run of 4.40 pace, my pace actually kept dropping to low 4.30's and I'd purposely slow down to 4.40's.

I've been practicing my race-fueling every single week for many months, this felt very natural for me to eat 90 gr carbs per hour during the race and keep up with the nutrition side of things.

I've put in a serious amount of work for the entire year, first with the post-op rehab and after with the mileage. It felt incredible to finally run the time and the strategy I planned.

Now I sort of have a 2 months holiday (mandatory life obligations) and will return to proper training from January. I don't think I will run a marathon in 2027, but I will most likely be aiming around a sub 3 marathon on the next one. Next years focus is entirely going to be Half Marathons and a lot of gym work and hopefully start running speed sessions.

Made with a new race report generator created by u/herumph.

Race Information

• Name: Jakarta Marathon - JAKIM
• Date: June 16, 2026
• Distance: 42.2 km
• Temperature: 27 degrees - 80 fahrenheit
• Humidity: 85%
• Location: Jakarta, Indonesia
• Website: https://jakim.id/eng/
• Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/18910529609
• Time: 3:37:21

Goals

Goal	Description	Completed?
A	3.21 - 3.24	No
B	3.30	No
C	PB (3.49)	Yes
D	Finish without Hip Issues	Yes

Splits

Kilometer	Time	Pace	Heart Rate
0–5 km	25:11	5:02/km	163 bpm
5–10 km	24:04	4:49/km	166 bpm
10-15 km	24:45	4:57/km	166 bpm
15-20 km	24:04	4:49/km	165 bpm
20-25 km	23:59	4:48/km	163 bpm
25-30 km	24:16	4:51/km	163 bpm
30-35 km	25:09	5:02/km	162 bpm
35-40 km	28:13	5:39/km	149 bpm
40-42.5 km	17:39	6:56/km	131 bpm

Background

I’ve been a hobby runner since 2017. No structured running or programs, just running because I enjoyed it. I ran a lot of events during that time and had PB’s of 1.34 and 3.49 in HM and M.

I got injured in February 2021 and didn’t run for the next 4 years. Had a hip surgery in April 2025 (hip impingement + labral tear repair) and got back to running in September.

--

Training

My goal in return to running and all these years of absence was to start over from scratch and to follow and build bigger things. I was no longer the runner / person from 2019 and I had bigger goals to chase. 

After a period of building a base from scratch, I got up to running 80 km weeks comfortably. I haven’t been able to follow any training programs at all because my hips weren’t ready for faster / tempo running. 

That meant no intervals, speedwork, tempos, MP runs. Just good old steady Zone 2 without any progression in pace. I spent a fair amount of time trying those things from 8 months Post-Op to 12 months, but I learned it the hard way that my hips needed a longer period to get to that level. 

I eventually let go of those goals and focused purely on building a base. Running 80 km (50 miles) were so easy and chill that I felt super fit and wanted to test my aerobic base in a Marathon. 

My weekly average before the deload and taper week is exactly 79 km for the past 12 weeks, including a half marathon 12 weeks ago.

Before the race I peaked at 88 km (55 miles) and had several long runs of 32-34 km (20-21 miles). I’ve done these on back to back weeks and twice in total. 

9 weeks out of race was my last tempo session that caused a lot of stiffness and issues, so the next 3 weeks I spent rehabbing those issues and the last 2 months overall were purely slow running. 

--

Limitations

Due to tempo running and testing the hips, I had lots of compensatory pain and stiffness often in Abdominals and compensating hip muscles. 

The last 8 months would look like this:

Run tempo > pain > 3 weeks of no speedwork > hips calm down > test again > pain > 3 weeks of no speedwork. 

I stupidly followed this cycle for 6 months because how else could I know if my hips are back to normal yet?

-- 

Pre-race

I’ve done a 12-10 x bodyweight per kg carb load on Friday and Saturday. 

Had a 2 hour flight from Bali to Jakarta and arrived on Saturday morning. On Saturday I had my regular breakfast before the flight, however I ate a lot of sugary stuff for the first time ever. It looks like it’s super easy and convenient to do a Carb Load off of Haribos and Mentos. 

Given the race temperature being 27 degrees (80 fahrenheit) and with 85% humidity at start, I also ate 4500 mg sodium on these 2 days before the race. It was critically important to follow the sodium guidelines for this event. 

I noticed at 7 pm that my race pack didn’t have safety pins, so I had to go to a market nearby to buy them. 

The race start time on Sunday was at 4 am. I slept at 10.30 pm the night before and woke up at 2. 

I also slept really really well during taper and deload weeks. That hasn’t been the case when I’ve been running high mileage but also waking up earlier for my runs. 

--

Race

NUTRITION / TEMPERATURE

Race temperature at start was 27 degrees (80 fahrenheit) with 85% humidity. I knew it was gonna be like this in advance so I had a proper carb, water and sodium plan in place to follow. 

For carbs I’ve targeted 70 gr per hour, water intake in total to be 2 liters and total sodium intake the entire race was about 1800 mg. 

First gel was at 30 mins, followed by every 25 mins of 1.5 x GU gels (33 gr carbs). 3 x 215 mg sodium caps at 67-117-177 minutes. 

Now the nutrition side of things out of the way, we can look into the race itself. 

--

RACE

Given this race is a big event (7100 finishers in Marathon), I had a B wave start due to not having a qualifying time for all the years of absence. 

I had no idea how my hips would react during the race so I targeted a goal time of 3.21 to 3.24 which I thought would be mechanically possible with my hips. 

Our waves start time was 5 minutes later than the A wave. This meant I spent the first 15 km overtaking about 2000 runners casually jogging a sub 5 marathon. At the start area I tried to sneak into A wave, but it didn’t work. My 1st KM split while running on the sidewalk was 5.40 which was 40 seconds slower than the target on 1st km. 

It was a very overwhelming experience to pass this many people for 1.5 hours, it wasn’t just for few Kilometers. 

At 6th km - I felt a little stiffness on my Right abdominal, which has been compensating for months whenever my Right hip flexor on Surgery area would tighten up.  I ended up massaging the abdominal the entire race, usually 20 seconds at a time every kilometer. I assumed it would develop into something bigger, but luckily it didn’t. 

18th to 20th km - my heart rate dropped from a steady 167 to low 160s around 162. This happened because of the humidity drop at that time right before 6 am.  I have never ran an event in the past where my heart rate would magically drop halfway of the race, but this has been consistent with how it behaved during my long runs as well. 

20 to 30th km - I felt surprisingly strong. I had lots of energy and power in the legs and things felt very stable and no signs of injury or slowing down. Course opened up a lot and I was finally running on empty roads rather than overtaking slower runners. 

33 to 35th km - This is the part where I felt fatigue building up slowly and the power in my legs disappearing. I slowed down a little but I was still comfortably running. 

38th km - From the 36th km, I started losing the kick I had in the legs and pace started drifting away. It came to a point at 38.5th km that I fully stopped and let go of the race. I had a bit of pain in my abdominals (compensating for the form and lack of energy in the legs), but my hips and legs felt like there was nothing left in them to push and pursue the finish times anymore. I didn’t care if I finished sub 3.30 - 3.35 or 3.40, I was just mentally done with the marathon this point and I didn’t care.

Before the race, I prepared myself for every worst case scenario that could happen with my hips and the compensations (injury wise) but I never prepared myself for how the marathon would be at this point in race. I really didn’t think and believed I would come this far in the race. 

None of the scenarios in mind had me coming to this point this comfortably without any issues. But something just fell apart and I was just done at 38.5th km. 

40th km - my split time on Garmin at 40 is: 3:19:41 and officially on the race result is 3.20.15. This is still pretty good time to chase 3.31 finish, but I could never be mentally further away from such goal at that moment. 

I walked and jogged on survival mode and finished the last 2.2 km in 17 minutes with a finish time of 3.37.21. 

177th out of 7572 people according to the race results. 

I laid down at the finish line for few minutes in pain and fatigue and that’s pretty much how I spent 15 minutes after collecting the medal. 

Apparently we had finishers t-shirt at a tent outside the stadium, but I was so tired and in pain that I completely forgot about this so I don’t have a finishers shirt. 

--

Post-race

I really hated the last 5 km of this race, hated how I felt after the event. But I woke up the next day very motivated and ready to train again. I have another marathon in 16 weeks (already scheduled before) and now I am more confident to do Marathon Pace runs during training.

I have more confidence in my hips now compared to 3 months ago and this makes a big difference for me. This was my first proper marathon after 7 years and I'm looking forward to proper racing.

I will now officially classify my surgery as successful because of how the event went and how there's no issues after the event. For me these are one of the strongest signs I had regarding the return to running process.

--

First big event

This was my biggest event ever, I ran the Melbourne and Sydney marathons pre-covid but this felt bigger for some reason. 

Even though the course was well marked and half marathoners didn’t cross into our sections, it was still an overwhelming experience to see thousands of runners on the road next to me. I didn’t enjoy this part at all, and I think I prefer an emptier and quieter event. 

15000 finishers in Half Marathon + 7100 finishers in Marathon.

This is about 20k people on the roads, at the start and finish areas. For me it was too overwhelming and I think I won’t be running big events because of this. 

Made with a new race report generator created by u/herumph.

PS: this post doesn't ask or offer medical advice regarding hip surgery or any other issues outlined.

Hello everyone,

I am happy to report here that my marathon on Sunday went really well and I can now fully classify my surgery successful.

I wrote a lot on this sub in the past but I will provide quick information before getting into details.

Events:

• 2021 February - Initial Injury
• 2025 April (16th) - FAI + Labral Tear repair on Right Hip.
• 4 years of no meaningful running or sports in this period.

I have fully documented all my gym / rehab sessions since post-op on Strava, if anyone wants to check and see the progression easily on their computer, you can check it here.

Also the marathon activity on Strava.

--

RUNNING JOURNEY

I - 31 Male, have been a hobby runner since 2017. No structured running or programs, just running because I enjoyed it. I have an extensive sports background besides running (relation to hips), but I would now keep things only running related here and not the stuff I did since I was 7 years old lol.

My running PB's for the Half 1:34:37 - Full 3:49:46 have both been from 2019.

I first felt initial symptoms 2 weeks before a half marathon in February 2021. While pacing for sub 1:32 very comfortably, I felt a sharpish pain on my groin area at 12th km and I was forced to stop and jog at 15th km. I finished this half in 1:36:00, but after this race and few months of trying to run; I completely stopped running in May 2021.

I didn't run at all for 1 year and returned to running for once a week in 2023. But it meant I would only run once or twice a week if I do and without any structure or purpose.

--

SURGERY and POST-OP

I had my surgery in April 2025, never had any pain or Post-Op related issues after the surgery. I didn't even have pain the day after the surgery, never felt anything uncomfortable that the surgery went wrong.

I spent a lot of time at the gym and for rehab purposes for the next 8 months doing very heavy training (rehab wise).

Returned to running 12 weeks Post-Op with 1 minute on 1 minute off for 20 minutes.

My first non-stop run was 3 km at 16 weeks P-O and from there I gradually increased the mileage.

Here's how the mileage looks to this day:

• April - Surgery
• July - 23 km - 14 miles
• August - 41 km - 25 miles
• September - 117 km - 72 miles
• October - 197 km - 122 miles
• November - 217 km - 135 miles
• December - 263 km - 163 miles
• January - 262 km - 162 miles
• February - 300 km - 186 miles
• March - 330 km - 205 miles
• April - 338 km - 210 miles
• May - 364 km - 226 miles
• June = Marathon PB 3:37:20 at 14 months

--

TRAINING

Even though I ran and trained a lot the last 4-5 months; things haven't been smooth at all.

My hips still aren't ready to handle higher force, speed/tempo running for extended periods of time. This will take a lot of time and preparation. Because of this, I have kept the running for Zone 2 only and stopped pushing faster running.

Faster running (anything faster than 4.30 min/km pace) for me causes a lot of issues during training and leaves my body with a lot of stiffness and pain on abdominals (compensatory pattern).

This is something I've been experimenting with from 8 to 12 months and it's something I completely stopped doing now because the hips need more time to be operating at this level. This is not something I will be trying for the rest of 2026. I will return to these paces around 20-22 months P-O and it's how I structured my training now.

I have absolutely no issues with running slow paces or longer durations like +30 km long runs (20 milers), no issues with back to back running. As long as the pace is slow, my hips feel like I can run forever and there are no issues whatsoever. This pushed me to running a marathon earlier in the training block because it felt easier for me to train and run a slow marathon compared to training for an all out 10 km race.

--

MARATHON EXPERIENCE

Last 2 months have been strictly slow zone 2 running so I could rock up with fresh hips. Things have been irritated 3-4 months ago so I had to change the structure of the program with hip protection in mind and not for cardiovascular benefits.

I had no idea how the event would go because:

1. I haven't ran this long or this fast in training and there was lots of uncertainty.
2. I had no idea how my hips would behave the last 10 km of the race.
3. I had no clue what version of hips would rock up on race-day. Will things feel stiff or relaxed?
4. Chasing a PB at Post-Op and running paces I never ran before in a Marathon.
5. First time running a marathon in hot-humid weather (SE Asia). 27 degrees (80 fahrenheit) with 85% humidity at start. This is very hard and challenging conditions.

For the marathon, I had to run at a pace that wouldn't cause any issues for my hips during the race. But also not slow enough that it becomes like a long run.

I'm not gonna go into technical details of the race (will do that for another sub), but here's how the event went.

My hips and legs felt super strong until about 32 km (20 miles). At this point I felt the fatigue building up, but still no issues for the hips. I slowed down a little but I could still run somewhat comfortably until 36-37 km. At 38 km, my body was completely spent. I had nothing left to push or dig through the pain so I started walking and jogging.

I was on the target to run 3.28.30 finish time at 38 km, but it seemed no longer possible with how I was feeling.

My official 40 km split is: 3.20.15 on race record and on Garmin it shows 3.19.41. I was still very close to 3.30-3.31 range, and yet I felt so far off with how I was feeling.

I really didn't care about the finish time and had nothing left to push, it became a pure survival.

Last 2.2 km of the race took me 17 minutes and I finished in 3.37.21 officially.

--

WHY THIS RACE WAS A SUCCESS

It's 2 days Post-Marathon now and I have no pain or stiffness at the hip region where I thought there would be issues. There is no restrictions and it feels like it's the most chill part of my body comparing how things are super stiff after a marathon. My quads are completely dead with 10/10 doms, hamstrings are 7/10, but Hip Region on Hip Flexors have no doms or issues at all.

I really really thought I would have hip problems during this race but I didn't have any issues at all? I prepared for all sorts of scenarios for the race, but my hips not having issues wasn't one of them.

I was completely spent at 38km either from lack of proper training or because of the hot and humid conditions. But either way, it wasn't because of how hips were mechanically operating Post-Op.

--

WHAT'S NEXT

I really hated the last 5 km of this race, hated how I felt after the event. But I woke up the next day very motivated and ready to train again. I have another marathon in 16 weeks (already scheduled before) and now I am more confident to do Marathon Pace runs during training.

I have more confidence in my hips now compared to 3 months ago and this makes a big difference for me. This was my first proper marathon after 7 years and I'm looking forward to proper racing.

I will now officially classify my surgery as successful because of how the event went and how there's no issues after the event. For me these are one of the strongest signs I had regarding the return to running process.

Any questions? Fire away :)