stats of the week: run 49 km, cycled 82 km, hiked 13 km, gym 1.5 h
stats of the previous week: run 12 km, cycled 39 km, hiked 12 km
With another longish run of 21 km I feel prepared for London. At least to finish somehow. My dream is to get to the Mall sub 4:30 h but I am not sure if the load of recent weeks was too much to be recovered. With a half marathon of 1:55 in mind I theoretically should be able to finish sub 4:15. Alas I know that marathon is my weakest distance and there is lack of long distance training runs.
Main target is to finish number 24 and come back next year for my jubilee race. At the age of 70 every race could be your last one. Let's celebrate each one.
Keep fingers crossed I won't be stopped by the french strike tomorrow...
Final countdown to #24
Success in Berlin
stats of the week: run 45 km, gym 1.5 h
Berlin was cold and windy but conditions were not too bad to run the famous half marathon with 26,000 other participants. Waiting at the start line I felt recovered and ready to try it. In recent weeks I hesitated to mention my secret target: The qualifying time for the New York City Marathon is 1:57 h within M70. I doubted that I could do it but I knew it wasn't far away.
So I started at the required 5:30 min/km pace and hoped to keep to it as long as possible. And it worked. I was able to increase my pace to 5:27 and 5:26 for the next 5K splits. Unfortunately I faced a hard cough attack between 19 and 20 K which forced me to stop for a while. An incident that happens to me often when I reach my limits. I lost about 30 secs and the final split went down to 5:32. I am still very happy with my finish time of 1:55:26 which is well within the NYC qualifying time. As it is a first come first serve rule I am quite sure to be accepted for 2024. It will be my 12th NYC marathon and definitely my last one.
