Fall Races

I haven’t updated my blog for a while,so this will be an update on my training and races since Mid-September.

Alstertal Half-Marathon (September 26th)

I managed to get some regular training in, but did not do any long runs (longest run was about 1h 15min). So obviously, I could not expect that much from this race. I was hoping to get close to my best time on that pretty hilly course which was just under 1h40.

The day of the race the weather was pretty horrible. It was raining hard and the course which is run on walking trails along the river Alster, was a muddy mess. It wasn’t too cold (so running in shorts was still okay), but you were drenched as soon as you went outside and your legs were muddy at the 1k mark.

The race itself went okay. I was running around the pace required to run under 1h40, but in the second half of the race I just couldn’t find the extra 1% of pace that I would have needed. Still, I was happy with my 1:40:44. I made sure to get on warm clothes afterwards and got home quickly.

Lübeck Citylauf (11.3k – October 10th)

I was pretty spent after the race. I managed to do some easy training, but within a week I had a bit of a flu, felt horrible and spent some days in bed to recover. By Friday before the Citylauf I felt okay enough to go on a very easy 5k run which didn’t feel all too good. I also hurt my knee again – very lightly this time, but I still could feel it when walking. But as my cousin Kai was to run this race as a prep for his upcoming first half-marathon race, I wanted to go to the race and warm up with him. I felt okay then, so I decided to run the race but start easy and then see how the race progressed.

I made sure to start at the back of the field and then make my way forward. I still felt my knee a little bit, but I wasn’t that bad and got better after a while. I managed to pick up my pace and was running really good considering that I spent a few days in bed not too long ago. Towards the end I was running 4:30 pace and was overtaking people all the time. I ran a whole lot slower than last year (about 4 minutes), but considering I was in bed just a few days ago, I was really happy with a solid run.

Lübeck Half-Marathon (October 24th)

After the Citylauf, it was two more weeks to the Half-Marathon. I wanted to do one longer tempo session with my cousin Kai to get him ready for his first Half. In order to allow him some recovery time before then, we had decided on Wednesday for the run. First, we did some easy 8k with his wife to warm up and get some k’s into the legs. Then, we did another 10k that also included 4k at his Half-Marathon pace, a little recovery and then another 1k at Half-Marathon and 500m at a little faster pace. I felt really good the whole time and Kai was happy that he was able to complete this session without too much trouble. I also did another 1h30 trail run, but that was an easier run just to be on my feet for a longer time and not trash myself before the race.

The day of the race, we had some bad weather again. But as the race would be run on streets, it at least wouldn’t be muddy. We watched the start of the Marathon (30 minutes before us) in pouring rain. We then went on to take off our warm-up clothes, had a short discussion weather to run in short or not and dropped off our bags when the rain stopped. It started again right after we had finished our races, but during the race it was dry and great to run.

The story of my race is pretty much the same as for Alstertal. I had an ambitious goal of running a similar time as last year, I was doing quite well for the first half, but when I would have had to step it up, I just couldn’t. I wanted to run close to 1:35, and ended up running a 1:37:58. Not off by a lot, not a catastrophic race – but still not what I was looking for.

Goals for my next race

My next race will be the 26k race around the lake in Ratzeburg. I’m pretty confident I can PR this race (currently just under 2h10 which is a 5min/k pace) if my prep goes well. But at this point I have to really improve within the next few weeks in order to get close to the goal I had set initially (sub 2 hours). What’s missing for now?

• longer runs – I’ve got to get a few longer runs (around 2 hours or longer)
• get my weight down – I’ll save this for another blog post, but I really have to improve here
• tempo runs – at this point I’m not “fit” enough to hold my goal pace for the duration of the race. I’ll need to run a 4:35 on a pretty hilly course, for Lübeck all I managed was a 4:38.
• overall volume – I’ve had a lot of stuff going on at work, and it resulted in only 3 runs per week. I’ve got to bump this up to 4 or better 5 runs per week.

Lots of work to do, not that much time for it. It’ll be an interesting few weeks …