Mörfelden Half Marathon 2017 – 7th Place

Mörfelden – again!

I didn’t race Rodgau, it was too much of a pain to get to, so I have just been training. Oh and being sick! Last week after getting home from swimming I started feeling ill, then vommed my guts out and basically felt like crap until Wednesday.  Mörfelden Half Marathon was in my plan though, I somehow thought it was on Saturday, which was a bit early, but the actual day, of Sunday, was much better.

So I was up at silly o’clock (5:50am) to eat before Jochen picked me up at 8am.  It didn’t take to long to get there, so we were pretty early.  It was -3 degrees when I left the house, it would be another chilly race!

I couldn’t find my heart rate monitor, and I amazingly haven’t run a half marathon since Mainz last May, so I was in a bit of unknown territory with regards to pacing. I wore my Zantes and felt like 1:21:xx would be doable, so about 3:50/km.  Jochen was aiming for a PB, which would be sub 4:00/km and Stephan who was also running, was aiming for a sub 1:30 time.

Run with the group
the start of the half marathon
me on the left, 2nd place is in the red vest. 1st place is no where to be seen!

Off went the start gun and we were away. Quite a lot of people were ahead of me, maybe 20 to start with. The eventual winner trotted off much faster than everyone else, because he is much faster than everyone else!  After about 1km Jochen caught me up and we ran in a group for quite a while.  I found that the group was a bit surgy. They would speed up for no reason, then slow down again. I don’t do that crap, so sometimes they were 10m ahead of me, and sometime I was in the group.

After about 7km one of the group stopped (he took off his socks apparently!) and I could see at the switch back that I was in 10th place, but 6th wasn’t far ahead.  The group slowly started to splinter, with new socks not back yet, and Jochen and another falling away slowly.  I finished the first lap in 40:32, decent enough.

The end of the group

The ‘group’ was then down to 2, but he was going too fast for me, and socks caught me up.  Then after about 13k, socks was dropped and the guy who was dropping me got dropped himself.  So I was left alone to grind out the last 7km.  At the switchback I was 7th, and looking pretty sure to finish 7th too as I was opening up a gap on 8th, and 6th was a good 100m clear of me too.

Pain

After 18km it started to hurt. I haven’t done many long runs and it started to show.  My pace was still fine, but I felt like my form was fading.  It was only about 12 minutes of pain anyway, so I could grind through it and crossed the finish line in 1:21:37, my second best half marathon time ever.

Jochen finished a couple of minutes later in 1:23:18 in a new 10k and half marathon PB time! Stephan had cut it a bit too close and was about 25m short of the line when the clock ticked over to 1:30:00, but he still had a good race.

7th Place from 300+

The awards ceremony was pretty prompt, which is rare! I was 7th overall and 3rd in my age group, the other 2 were both 2nd in their’s.

So all in all it was a pretty good run. I think I have some time I can take off by running an asphalt course, as well as not being ill before hand.  I am not in half marathon PB form though, and that is fine, triathlon is the goal this year.

Next week I am going back to Groß-Gerau for the 10km Frühjahrslauf, sub 37 is the goal. See you then!