What do sane people do on a sunday when the rain is pouring down? Snuggle up on the couch, read a book, watch movies in the warm living room. Well training for ones best half marathon time takes it’s tolls and one has to toughen up and pass on luxuries like that.
I had wanted to run Wings of life this year for several reasons. First it is for charity.The entire entry fee goes to spinal cord injury research. Second : I need to the training. It is always different running races than training alone. Running with and against the other participants always spurs one on to ones best feats. Last but not least it is a very interesting race principle.
Instead of running a defined distance a catcher car starts half an hour after the runners and follows them in slow pace. Once it catches up with a runner and overtakes you are out of the race. The idea reminds me of the Stephen King (or rather Richard Bachman) story, The Long Walk, where contestants of a long distance walk get shot if they fall behind by a certain amount of time. Alas, I wasn’t shot, but thinking of the story gave me extra motivation to run hard 😉
I tried to run the pace I was aiming for Great North Run, which is about 5 min per kilometer, but could’t keep it up. Still a lot of training to get there.
Even with rain it was a really enjoyable race that lead through to Munich Hinterlands to places I had never been before, despite having lived in this city most of my life. My official race distance is 23.44 km which differs slightly from what my brand new Fenix 3 GPS watch recorded (which by the way also failed to track my heart rate).
The next race on my way to the north will be in June.
Still a long way to go with my charity goals , too, so please donate and support me and MIND at the Great North Run.
I was planning to go to the FMX animation festival in Stuttgart this week, but life is what happen while you are busy making other plans and I need to stay to look after my boy.
[ssba]
