Lübeck City Run

This Sunday, I ran another short race – the Lübeck City Run, an 11.3k race in Lübeck’s beautiful old city center.

Here’s a picture of the last few meters:

(Of course, at the time of the race the chairs, tables and umbrellas
were removed and we had a free course.)

Here’s another look at the course from my GPS data (a screenshot from Google Earth):

It shows Lübeck’s old city center on the island in the middle. The island is formed by two rivers and some artificial additions in order to defend the city in the middle ages. A lot of pretty buildings and magnificent churches, some of them dating back to the 11th century, are located on the island.

The race started in the lower middle part of the island, we did two full loops (counter-clockwise) around the city and ended with a half loop on the old “Marktplatz” in the middle of the island. The GPS data showed it was exactly 11.3k, and it was a good proof of the accuracy of the course and the accuracy of my Garmin 405 when not running under tree cover. (Even though the paths from the two loops are quite distinct in the upper part.)

It was getting quite cold during the night before the race (about 5°C, about 40°F) but the rain stopped in time and the streets were dry by the time the race started. It took some thought to figure out whether to run in short or long, but I still decided to go short/short. It turned out to be warm enough, but if it had started to ran it would have been quite cold.

The race itself went really well. I was confident I could run in under 50 minutes, and I wanted to get close to my course PR of 49:05. This would require about a 4:25 to 4:20 pace. I started off pretty fast. After the initial congestion at the start (lots of first timers .. seems they have to start in the first or second row), I got into a fast but still comfortable pace, one I was confident I could run for the whole race. My Garmin data showed that I was running at about a 4:10 pace .. it didn’t feel that fast but was confirmed by the first marker that I saw at 3k. I just hoped that I’d be able to hold that pace!

I noticed that my breathing got a bit harder, but I was able to hold my HR pretty even – always a sign that I manage to keep my focus and don’t overpace. Towards the end of the second loop I was catching up and overtaking one of the people from my club that is about my level but was beating me in the last few races. Another positive sign that my race was going well!

My pace was dropping a bit into the 4:20s, but I was running as fast as I could at this point. There was some movement in the field, but I was still overtaking a few people. The last uphill was really hard and I lost a few spots but still managed to come in at 47:57, a 4:14 average and a PR by more than a minute. Excellent!

It’ll be interesting to see is how much recovery I need before I can get into my next hard training sessions. There’ll be some things to do with my wife, so I hope that I’ll be able to get a few hard sessions in before my next planned race, a half marathon in two weeks. Should be interesting to see how much I can improve within four weeks since my last half-marathon …