Forstenrieder Half Marathon 2022

It’s only 15 days until my marathon now! The last week and a half of training has been tough, last weekend was a double long run weekend, followed by a 39 min 10k on Tuesday as a tempo run, I am feeling tired, not helped by the fact that Zak the Dog has started waking me up at 6am everyday -little shit!

Today I had a 26km marathon pace run in the plan, so I decided to run the Forstenrieder Half Marathon to keep things interesting. It also happened to be pretty warm, about 18°C and unbroken sunshine, though we’d be running in the forest, so should have plenty of shade (incorrect!).

I got to the start at 11:45 for a 1pm start, though I planned to run from 12:30 so I could do 2km warm up followed by 5km at race pace before the start. I was slightly worried about wearing my Alphaflys as the course was 1/3 on trail, but did it anyway…

Alex of the Roche Road Runners team said he would try to run with me at 4:00/km, until he couldn’t anymore, I thought he’d manage the whole thing at that pace after running a 2h53 marathon in Autumn last year.

I did the first 6.8km and it felt easy, my GPS was all over the place though, so I decided to manually monitor my pace by clicking whenever I passed a km marker in the race. I got back to the start with about 3 mins to spare and could start right at the front, all good.

So off we went and Alex was a bit fast, the 1st km was in 3:47, then a 3:50, well at least we banked some time! We soon settled to just below 4:00/km pace and started to see what the course had to offer. There was quite a lot of trail, it wasn’t technical, but often a bit off camber, I hate that. There were also plenty of stones, but that is nitpicking a bit.

I also had the feeling that we were going slightly uphill from km 5-12, then it started going slightly down again, which was good. I remember a 38:50 split at 10km, way too fast and it was starting to feel a little tougher than I’d like.

After 15km, we were back on asphalt and going downhill and I kind of drifted ahead of Alex and the other guy I was running with, I did consider slowing down, but I think my pace was fine, they were struggling. So I kicked on alone until the end, in the last 2-3km, there were the slower 10k runners on course, so I could see lots of other runners and try to cheer people on, but I get the idea people just feel offended when they get overtaken by someone clapping them on!

Soon enough I was on the home straight and crossed the line and stopped my watch in exactly 1h23:00, only to realise I had to run 25m more to the real finish line! After stopping I had a little dizziness, which was less than ideal, but it subsided in 30 seconds or so, I think it was an above marathon pace effort though.

Looking happy at the end!

I binned my warm down, leaving me with 28km with 26km at above marathon pace on the day, not bad. I could have gone faster, but 16km more at that pace would be very tough, luckily Zurich will be cooler (8:15am start), flatter and all on tarmac, I’ll also be running slower than 1h23 half marathon pace, I’ll do exactly 4:00/km pace.

Alex finished 50 seconds behind me, happy with his run having predicted he’d struggle to break 1h30. My Alphaflys seemed to take a bit of damage during the race, along with my feet. I had a very odd blister on the bottom of my foot and my big toe nails hurt, at least I have plenty of time to recover anyway.

So next weekend is the Tour of Flanders 144km sportive, then it’s go time, Zurich marathon in sub 2h50, I think I can do it! I know I can do it!

I might blog them both, unless they go very badly that is 🙂