It’s been 3 weeks since the marathon and I thought I’d give the Raffeisen Oberland Challenge a go this year. It starts off with a 10k in Geretsried, which should be a fast course.
On the Friday night before the race, Katja was out and I ended up eating lots of shit, including a full Ben & Jerrys, a big bag of doritos and M&Ms too. It wasn’t ideal, but I also didn’t know what to expect having not done much organised training since the marathon.
We went to Munich in the morning so that Katja could get her nose piercing swapped (or not) then we ate brunch in town, so I had 2 croissants and some bread. We then headed to Geretsried where it rained and we were there pretty early.
I had my alphaflys with me, even though my big toe nail is still black after the marathon. I saw Armin from Roche before the race and we ran a loop of the course beforehand as a warm up.
The race started at 3pm, and I set off and was in first place from the start. I looked around a bit worried and only after about 300m did others join me at the front. I felt pretty good but didn’t know what to expect when my GPS beeped for the first time, it showed 3:25, things were going well!
A group of 3 had got ahead of me and seemed a bit fast for me, but I had hoped that they might be running the 5k. I was with 2 other guys in a nice little group and we stayed together nicely. It was a 4 loop course and on the 2nd loop we lost one of the guys in the group, Wolfgang. He was the guy who ran with me and Alex in Fürstenried for quite a while before leaving us behind.
After 2 loops I was hoping to see some of the first 3 split off of the 5k, but none did, so I was in 5th place, but running with 4th. He started to get a few seconds on me, but the elastic never broke. I passed 5k in 17:49 and felt good, especially as I had passed a km marker and my GPS was spot on.
In the last loop, I brought the 4th place guy back and was feeling strong when someone overtook us like we were standing still! I ran into the stadium and had about 300m to go, but saw on my watch that sub36 wasn’t going to happen, despite every km split being on time for it.
I came in in 36:11, a good result for me, but 5th man, 4th in my age group and 6th overall.
I feel like I could have gone sub36 if I had done a little bit better prep for the race. I forgot my electrolyte drink and ate way too much the day before the race. Considering that my PB is only 25 seconds faster, I think I can go under that next time out.
Anyway, the race was good fun, it had set me back on course to get some training done and get those PBs that are there for the taking.
The next race in the series is a hilly half marathon. I’m not sure I’ll do that one as it’s on the same day as a work event and it’s pretty far away to run a guaranteed non-PB and leave me needing a good amount of recovery afterwards…
That means my next race might be on July 3rd, quite a while away. I might need to do some parkruns in the meantime to keep the juices flowing! A sub 17min 5k and sub 35min 10k would be so awesome!