Ending 2010 and Planning 2011

For me, a year ends well with a race .. so I had signed up for the 10.2k
“Silvesterlauf” (New Years Eve Run) in Mölln. I had run there a few years ago (I think it was 2007), and it was a great way to end a year and start the new one.

This year was no different, even if the weather was quite tricky. It had snowed a lot over Christmas (about 10 to 15 inches or 20 to 30 cm), so it was going to be a winter run. But it was getting a bit warmer towards race day, so the snow was getting soft and mushy – not exactly great running conditions. Nonetheless, the sun was out and I decided to make the best of it. Based on the conditions, it was clear that I couldn’t expect a great time, but I wanted to run a hard race and see what was possible.

It turned out that not a lot was possible for me that day. As usually, I started a bit back and was overtaking some people after the start and in the first few k. When there was enough space to run, I tried to pick up the pace a bit, but with the bad footing I couldn’t get much faster without feeling really slippery. Towards the middle, I tried again to distance some people that I had overtaken earlier, but that backfired and I was even moving backwards in the field, not being able to hold the pace I was going. Also, the deep snow and slush was really getting to me. I finished in just under 49 minutes, probably the fastest that was possible for me on that day.

Plans for 2011

I was going quite a bit back and forth to come up with a decent plan for 2011. An Ironman race is not in the cards right now. I was looking for a longer running race, but all potential races such as Rennsteig just didn’t work (Tina will only have a few open weekends, and we’ll leave on an early vacation this year). So I finally settled on the following:

• run Hamburg Marathon (end of May)
  From a logistics viewpoint, this is the simplest race for me to do: Pick up my race number after work on Thursday before the race, then take the train to Hamburg on Sunday morning. No need for a trip or a hotel.
  My goal for this year is to break my PR of 3:29 – possibly try to get a Boston qualifier time of sub 3:20 (which will be a stretch). I will have to do some decent training for this, but hopefully not quite as time consuming as training for an IM.
• run a fast half marathon in the training leading up to Hamburg
  I’ve been thinking for a while about a sub 1:30 half marathon, and if my training for Hamburg goes well, I should be able to get close to this barrier. Not sure which race fits best, I’m looking at a race in early April in Neumünster which may be a good fit.
• run another marathon earlier in the year (probably Kiel or Husum early March)
  In order to collect some more marathons and to make sure I’m focusing on longer training in the winter months, another marathon sounds like a good idea to me. Not even close to PR, just complete it under 4 hours and treat it as a really long training run. I should be able to recover relatively fast from it before the focused marathon training for Hamburg starts.
• loose weight and race light in Hamburg
  In the last years, I’ve always tried to get my weight down for my main race and haven’t had much success. My best was in 2007, when I raced at 85kg. The last years I was more around 88 to 89kg, which is where I am currently at. It would be good to get down to 85kg again, and I’m sure that this would make PR’ing a little easier. Also something to focus on until my first marathon for this season.

Enough to do in the next few months .. hopefully I’ll manage to reach some goals – I’ll keep you posted!