Bernadette Pichlmaier and Dennis Pyka take German Marathon titles 2010

May 10, 2010

The German Marathon Championships were part of the Mainz Marathon (results published here already). Bernadette Pichlmaier (2:40:58h) repeated last years victory in the womens category, while Dennis Pyka (2:20:09h) won his first individual title.

The 41-year old Pichlmaier started the race with the qualification time (2:33h) for the European Championships) in the back of her mind. With a first half of 1:16:51h she was not too far off and still en route to a new PB (2:35:26h). However, in the second part of the race she had to decrease the pace: After 25km the cool and rainy weather hit her legs and she was concentrating on defending the national title from that point onwards. At the end Pichlmaier still had a comfortable lead  over silver and bronce medalists Fakia Hofmann (2:48:23h) and  Steffi Volke (2:51:49h).

Also the mens race saw a clear and unchallenged winner. 38-year old Dennis Pyka was the pre-race favorite and won the national title with a lead of around eight minutes. With his winning time of 2:20:09h Pyka was close to his PB (2:19:14h) and ran almost even splits (1:09:35+1:10:34) on a course that has two climbs on the second half. After the race the new German Champion stated that he was also effected by the wet conditions, as he already had wet shoes before the start of the marathon: “That’s the reason why I got blisters pretty fast”. Second place was taken by Bastian Krantz, husband of the elite race walker Sabine Krantz, in 2:28:08h. Philipp Nawrocki (2:28:26h) was a lucky bronce medal winner, as it was the first individual medal for the 33-year old (same goes for Bastian Krantz).