German Championships Halfmarathon 2009 in Aichach: DNF

April 5, 2009

The first major competition this year – the German Halfmarathon Championship - was a disaster. For the first time in my life I dropped out of a Championship-race on the road. After 11km the game was over.
The split time for 5K was 16:00min and 10K around 32:15min. That would still have been ok and a time of sub-68 would still have been theoretically possible. However, I was feeling too bad already and felt like I would not finish the race as I wanted to.

The weather was really hot (especially coming from the still icy Finland 20°C make you feel dizzy) and also a bit humid. The course was a flat 5,1K loop with quite a lot of turns and a 500m cobblestone part. After all the conditions were not perfect but still acceptable – since it was a championship race that doesn’t matter too much anyway.

Some of the excuses I can list here would include the long travel (more than 10hours, starting at 4AM German tine) before race day, my crash on the last weekend and the hot weather. From the start on I was not feeling fresh and never really found into my race. After around 4-5km I had a first big low point, where I could just hang in at the back of a group, not trying to loose to much ground. After recovering a bit and gaining some places The second down came at around 10K. By that time I felt really horrible – pain in the back, heavy legs, only the breathing was totally easy. Also the split of 32:15 was not as fast expected, or let’s say: I should have felt much more fresh for this split, maybe going for an even or negative split on the second part. But I never got into the “rolling” feeling and when I saw my coach at 11K and made a sign that I’m going hard he also said I should quit. So, with a big “SCHEISSE” the race was over for me, lying in around 15th to 20th place and still 10K to go.
Now I will have a detailed analysis of the race and hope to fix the things that went wrong. The next race is already next week and actually I’m glad about this fact, because right now I feel I can do better and I want to see the results of the several months of training.