The Flughafenlauf is a nice race where you ran around the airport. (as the German name indicates). In preparation for Gigathlon, this would be another test to see where I’m at fitness-wise. However to keep it fun I decided to go back to the basics and just run by feeling. Last year I ran it in 1:28:00. A 5min/km pace would result in a 1:25:00 and a 4:30min/km would be 1:16:30 which would be a really nice goal.

When I started the race I only glanced at my watch 2 times on the first kilometer to make sure that I don’t start too fast. I was around a 4:20min/km pace. Which seemed a little fast. But I felt great 🙂 Note: A couple weeks earlier at the GP Dübendorf I ran 10km in 4:28min/km.

I was surprised that so many people passed me in the early part of the race. I was also wondering how many of them I would catch later on. Around 2k I settled in behind a guy which ran a decent pace. He was running a little faster pace than most people and we started passing people. I really focused on just enjoying the experience, not just on the outcome (meaning result). I actually felt great. We were running at a decent pace (by feeling) and I focused on enjoying the surrounding (nice day) and spending as little energy as possible to follow the guy in front of me. While the person in front of me had a nice pace, he really needs to learn to ran tangents.

Around km 9 there was an uphill and I appreciated that the guy in front of me slowed down and adjusted the pace accordingly. On the downhill I went faster and left my pacer behind. However I soon found another person coming from behind which I followed. So far I still had resisted at looking at the watch. I kinda knew/hoped I was running faster than 5min/km but didn’t know how much faster. I noticed that I was getting tired and focused on conserving my energy and not letting up from the guy in front of me.

Once we had 5km to go I calculated how much longer I had to run in my head. Assuming a 5min/km 25min and 4:00min/km only 20min. I assume I was somewhere in between. It got harder and harder to follow the guy in front of me. Again my race experience kicked in and I managed to keep up with the guy for much longer. My brain certainly was tired because once in a while I forgot what the last kilometer marker was.

Earlier there was another race on a similar course with the same ending which was 7.5km long and had the same finish. So when I saw a 5km marker I knew it was only 2.5km to the finish. From the US I’m used to miles when running. Here I had marker for every 0.5km based on my race and with some math from the earlier race. Still the 0.5 marker seemed too far apart 🙂

When I came closer to the finish I couldn’t believe when the announcer said something about 1:10:00. While it took a while longer to get there, I just focused on getting over the line and finishing it. Had I known that I was 1.2 seconds from sub 1:12:00 I might have pushed a little harder.

I was pretty destroyed afterwards. But the experience was great and yet another confidence boost. Compared to last year I ran 16min faster! I’m looking forward to my next race which is Gigathlon. Unless I decided to do another practice race 🙂

My average pace was 4:14min/km which I’m super please with.
35th (out of 182 ) in my age group and 108th (out of 694) of all male runners.