Ready for my next race: Hochbrückenlauf 2011

Tomorrow, I’m going to run my next race: Hochbrückenlauf 2011, a 29.2k race through some beautiful countryside, and also a pretty hard test race.

Recovery after Husum Marathon

It is almost three weeks since I raced the Husum Marathon. I’m not really sure if I am properly recovered from this race, just this last Tuesday I didn’t feel like running at all (so I took the evening off). That may have had as much to do with stress at work, so I tried to take things a bit easier at work (or rather more focused on the important things and not be fazed by the little stuff). It helped, and I was able to do some decent training in the last few days and feel okay for tomorrow.

But you never know until you race, so I may be in for a rude surprise …

Goals for the Race

My best times in this race are a 2:19 and a 2:20, around a 4:45/k pace. Usually, this race is the last test race before my spring Marathon, and I try to run it at Marathon goal pace or a little bit quicker. My goal time for this year (a 3.20h) would be a 4:42/k, so my goal should be a decent PR for Hochbrückenlauf, possibly around 2.15.

However, this year (with my Marathon being at the end of May instead of April) I’m more toward the start of my focused Marathon prep than the end of it. So I’m not sure if that goal is reasonable, but I’m willing to give it a try to run a PR.

So I’m going to start at about a 4:45/k pace and see how that feels. If I manage to eat and drink at that pace, I’ll try to increase the pace a little bit after about 8k (when the course is going to flatten out). I’ll try to relax and eat until around 20k, as the 23k mark is under this bridge:

while 24k is on the bridge and there is a little hill in between ..

I hope I can keep things together in the seemingly never ending 5k after the bridge. As long as I’m not completely falling apart, I think I’ll be happy, and I should be able to post a decent time.

Also, this will probably be the first run for this year that I’ll be running in shorts .. this is what the weather report looks like:

Cold in the morning, but sunny and warmer during the day.

I just hope to make it to the start in time, this night we’re going to switch to daylight saving, and last time the iPhone alarms weren’t working for a few days. I guess I’ll need a backup alarm clock for tonight!