Right, it is 2020, return of the comeback time! I haven’t been doing my race reports much recently, you may have noticed that my results over the last 18 months haven’t been great, really from Kandel 2018 onwards has been a shitshow! After a while, I started to lose the will to write up another bad race, so I missed my 39:30 10k run in Plänterwald and my 1:28 Mugglesee half marathon, both my worst times for the distance in the last 5 years I guess.
Anyway, there have been glimpses of light. My 17:46 parkrun 5km was a PB, I haven’t had one of those in a while! I have also ‘won’ 2 parkruns, including one where I wasn’t running at 100%! I have decided to concentrate on running in 2020 anyway, with me getting a puppy in November, time is a bit more limited and I won’t have the time to train for 3 sports to any decent level, so I will try to get a lot of miles in the old legs and get back on running track.
So to the Winterlaufserie. It’s in Wilmersdorf which is miles away, but pretty easy to get to from Adlershof. It’s a 10k, followed by a 15k a week later, then 2 weeks later a half marathon, pretty cool.
I weighed in at 81kg, so there is a lot of work to do there, and I ran 5 days in a row leading into the race. My calves are a bit sore and I am having a bit of an Achilles problem in my right heel, but nothing too bad. I was feeling a bit negative and thought I should run a 38:00 pretty easily, but 37:00 seemed unrealistic.
At the sign-in I met Lukas and Carsten, Lukas was aiming for a 37:30, I thought it would be a bit optimistic for me, but I could but try. Christoph was a bit less optimistic with 39 minutes.
The course is a bit shit, it was frosty and I was slipping on the uphill part every lap. The lap is about 2.25km, so it is 4 laps and change this week.
We set off and lots of people were ahead of me from the start, but I felt decent. I was with Lukas and Carsten was ahead of us, I hadn’t expected that as his PB was 38:30 or so. Lukas led the group for the first lap or so, then I took over and felt good. After 2 laps we caught Carsten and were keeping a good pace, I always saw 3:45 pace or so on the watch when I glanced at it.
Soon Lukas passed me again, and Carsten again, then near the end of the last lap I passed Carsten again, only for him to pass me again in the last couple of hundred metres! I got into the stadium after 36 mins and could run in a 37:22, which I was pretty pleased about! Carsten was just ahead in 37:16 and Lukas a few metres further ahead in 37:13.
It was a pretty fun race, if the course were less slippy I fancy I could have run a few seconds faster, but I can test that hypothesis next week hopefully!
37:22 is still about 95 seconds off my PB, but given my weight and lack of training, I feel pretty good about it. There is a lot of room for growth and hopefully, over the next couple of months, I’ll grab that low hanging fruit and get back down to 36-minute shape.