Thanks a bunch! Yeah, i'm really happy to have beaten all my goals (soft goal: finish, super conservative goal: finish sub 4, conservative goal: finish around 3:45, ambitious goal: finish sub 3:30). Thankfully, as mentioned, the conditions that day were pretty close to perfect. It really helped to be running my first 42k at such a big event, because it's really helpful to
constantly have spectators at the sidelines who cheer you on.
Already emailed the folks who did the timekeeping, i'd love official stats.
Should be around the 130th of men in my age class, around 870th or so total (out of 5693 marathon finishers).
Looking at some aerial photos i'm really happy i switched starting blocks.
This is the field of runners at KM 1 - the starting blocks are like so:
I really feel that Block 3 (Marathon 3:30-4:00, Half-Marathon 1:45-2:00) is way too crammed. That feels like exactly the middle of the 'bell curve' of participants.
I smartly switched to block 2, which then goes on to run on the left side of the Danube bridge (on the right in the above image) - which is a whole lot less crammed.