Well again the world has turned, things have changed quite a bit in life since Geretsried, but this is a running blog, so let’s get on with it!
I’m not much of a summer runner, so after training pretty consistently until mid-June, my sub-thresholds started being skipped in the heat. I was ill for my half marathon and have been just kind of treading water for the last couple of months, with no intensity but I have been doing some longer runs, like around the Walchensee and Tegernsee, with maybe some bigger lakes to come.
Seeing that it was going to be 30°C on race day for the Hohenburger Schlosslauf, I did consider not doing it. But to stay in the ROC series overall results, I needed to do this one. I thought, I can always just jog it around, no pressure, but I knew that probably wouldn’t be the case given that the course is hilly.
So off to Lengries I went with trail shoes and my Adidas Adizero SLs, not knowing if I needed trail shoes or not. I arrived about 50 minutes before the race and got my number, didn’t know anyone there so I asked a few randoms which shoes I needed, everyone said normal street shoes, so Adidas it would be.
I saw Hannes, the Roche Road Runner’s group leader until he retired, he told me that the first 4.5km are hard, with the big climb being after about 4km, good to know in advance.
Off we went and it was straight downhill, I felt ok but I haven’t practiced downhill running, so I probably wasn’t using top form. It then looped around and went back up, immediately about 5 people overtook me, mainly smaller people than me!
My first kms were in about 4:18/km, fine. There was a little 2km loop before going onto the bigger loop, so I went back down the slope again and back up, my pace was consistent. Then the course went off onto the hill of the day. It was steep and there was no point in my trying to run it, so I walked as fast as I could. It felt like it took forever and I was haven’t to slow my walking at times! I was passed by a couple of people but overtook the guy I call ‘Big Sven’ in my head. He muttered what I was thinking, stupid hills, I’m too heavy for this sh!t!
After the big hill finally finally finished, it went steep downhill, I couldn’t really use this gradient too well as it was too steep for me without practice, I think a bit of training on downhills would have made a big difference here. There was then a nasty little drag uphill where I considered walking for a long time, but managed to keep up a decent jog. It wasn’t actually steep, but I was tired!
After the drag came a lovely downhill. It was still on a big of gravel, but shallow enough gradients that I could get some pace going. I didn’t know how long the downhill last but decided to enjoy it while it lasted. What I didn’t know was that it pretty much lasted until the end! There was a very short incline with about 400m to go, buut otherwise it was all very nice runnable downhill to the end.
I had a few people ahead of me who I was slowing catching up to, but I couldn’t quite bring them back. I think if I knew the course, I could have got them.
I crossed the line in 39:37. I had guessed that I would run approximately my 10km time over 8km +250m of climbing, and that seems to be about right. I am not disappointed with my time, given the circumstances, though some people were much much faster than me! Someone broke 30mins! That is crazy.
I was 7th in my age group and next up is another hill run, with 480m of climbing. Not exactly my forte, but I’ll give it a go, before a nice flat 10km and a half marathon to end the series.
Let’s hope that I’m in a better place mentally and physically when the next races come around, I’ll let you know then!