19. Bitburger Silvesterlauf in Trier: 8km – 25:49,6 (28th place)

January 4, 2009

In Germany there are more than 100 races on the last day of the year. After running in Bietigheim last year I wanted to run in Trier this year, because it’s the other biiig race in Germany. In Trier there is much more international competition (this e.g. Olympic 10.000m bronze medalist Micah Kogo) and the German top runners usually run either Bietigheim or Trier.
The course in Trier is a 1-km loop with some sharp corners and a lot of cobblestone – i.e. the race is flat but not super-fast. In the elite race of the competition I had to run 8 loops (=8km) with around 50 competitors. Because of the short round, there are quite a lot of people and a good atmosphere with confetti and thunderer whistles, that’s why Trier is called the “German Sao Paulo”.
The race itself was neither fish nor fowl. I didn’t went out so fast (in fact a bit slow) and caught up other runners all the way after the first round. The km-splits were: 3:13,7/3:12,6/3:14,8/3:15,9/3:15,9/3:17,4/3:14,3/3:05,5. After the few speed work I did in the last training period I couldn’t expect much more and the last km shows that there is a lot of space to improve. Anyway, it was a great experience to run against some of the best runners in the world, to stay in the same hotel and to meet them and have a chat with them. After all you can see that they are also only humans and need to work hard for their success.