Running with Jack

Today was a holiday in our part of Germany (Three King’s Day). In the neighboring state of Rhineland-Pfalz they have to work, strange but true.

In any case I decided to move my 30K/18.6M long run from Saturday morning to this morning. This would give me a day of rest before my 15K/9.3M race on Sunday.

I made the mistake of staying up until 12:30 last night watching a movie, so at 7 a.m. when my alarm when off I was not exactly in top form. I layed for half a second in bed until the idea of postponing the run until later today or tomorrow morning entered my head, but then sprang out of bed – I knew it had to be now or never! I had a small breakfast, suited up, warmed up and headed out the door. It was still a bit dark, the air was cool (1F/34F) and fresh, no wind and no rain (or snow).

My body was kind of reluctant the first 5-10 minutes, but eventually I fell into my groove. I wanted to run just a bit slower than my normal 6:00/K (9:39/M) marathon race pace that I usually train with. I headed out of my village (Stutensee-Friedrichstal) and took the normal super-straight bike path through the forest to Karlsruhe, reaching the 11K turnaround point in 68:02 minutes. By this time it was light outside, so I turned on my MP3 player to keep me company. There wasn’t another soul anywhere in sight, I guess they were all sleeping in.

So after turning around shortly past the 11K point I took an equally straight, but parallel, path back towards my village. I reached my next turning point, around the imaginary 20K marker (about 2.5K from my village) with a time of 2:01:36. Here I took a right and headed towards the neighboring village of Stutensee-Blankenloch.

Shortly before Blankenloch I crossed over a bridge spanning the local railroad line and highway, then ran along the edge of the town for a few minutes. Eventually I reached another bike path, turned left and headed towards Stutensee-Friedrichsal and home. This is a rather nice way as it heads by several fields, eventually passing a couple farms and the Stutensee Palace. I passed by these and continued over the fields towards home. With about 4-5K to go I was wearing out fast, my legs hurt from the 100% asphalt route and my energy was depleted. I guess I should have gone to bed on time last night.

In any case I tried to ignore my discomfort and kept plodding along. I crossed over the last highway and onto the last bike path that led to my house. Today I skipped my traditional 200+ meter sprint to the house, it was enough just to reach the doorstep. I walked around the block for 5 minutes to loosen the legs up a bit and cool down, did some stretching and called it a day. I ran steady for 3:06:29 on 100% asphalt or concrete trails, no breaks! I guess I reached my goal of 30K, in which case I had an average pace of 6:13/K (10:00/M). As I was dragging pretty bad the last 5K this is probably pretty accurate.

So after a warm bath, a hot meal and an hour’s nap I feel pretty good. My legs are tired and sore, but no unusual aches or pains. Tomorrow is a rest day, no training!

On Sunday I have a 15K race – as I said yesterday this will be a “just to finish” race. I love Dawn’s comment – “those are the ones where I set a new PR”. Typically this has proved to be the case. As this will be my FIRST 15K race, technically I will be setting a PR no matter how fast I run ;-)

But for the sake of not tearing anything up, I really am going to try to restrain myself and just run the race as a training run, e.g. 6:00/K pace.