Running With Jack

On Friday night I set out for an easy half hour run, but bumped into one of my running club after about 10 minutes and ran with him for awhile. We kept the pace down and were chatting so much that I ended up running over 12 km/7.5 mi.

On Saturday I worked most of the day on different chores and projects around the house until around 6:30 p.m., then changed and headed to the half-marathon in Stutensee-Buchig. There I met several members of my running club who were running the 5K, 10K, or half-marathon. A couple asked me how fast I was running and three of us, Gerd, Conny and I, decided to run the half-marathon together.

Promptly at 8:00 p.m. we lined up at the starting line and soon we were off. There were roughly 400 people racing that day, so it was a bit tight the first few minutes as we squeezed our way around the narrow streets of the village. There were lots of fans cheering us on, at least until the edge of town, where we turned and headed out over the fields on a bicycle path to the neighboring town of Blankenloch.

The race was mostly flat and entirely over roads and asphalt bike paths. The temperature was around 70°F, partly cloudy and with just a slight wind – good conditions for a race. As I ran with Gerd and Conny over the first kilometer I contemplated whether I wanted to maintain the slower 5:15/km (8:30/mi) pace with them or run my own race. As we passed the first kilometer marker I sped up for a minute or so, but decided I wasn’t motivated enough to run a personal best race so rejoined my running partners.

I let Gerd and Conny set the pace and we knocked out the first 10K in around 53:30. The race course consisted of two out and back loops with an extra loop added onto the second round. As we looped around we were able to greet and encourage those from our running club and other friends. This was cool and helped to pass the time.

On the second round we started to slack off a bit with the pace, but as the storm clouds grew darker, picked up the pace again. By kilometer 19 Gerd was having trouble maintaining the pace and told us to go on ahead, but we stuck with him. We finished together in +/- 1:53:39, which for Conny was good enough for first place in her age group (W50). I finished 104/159 overall, and 14/23 in my age group.

After the race I joined the rest of the running club that was there for some food and drink at the finish. All in all it was a fun run and a good evening with some good people!