Running – Twelve Weeks Later….

The other day I was blogging about having started with running again (Write a Blog and Ride a Porsche), and finally last sunday – after more than 50 training sessions – I participated in my first official run over 5 km, the 3rd Tierparklauf in Berlin. (The Tierpark is the East Berlin Zoo founded in 1955).

My team partner and me started in the 5 km generation run EE, which was for two grown-ups (Erwachsene, hence the double E) who are at least 16 years apart, who both run the 5 km. Here you see us before the race, with our time measuring chips tied to our shoes.

We had several goals: have fun, stay away from injuries, run as fast as last year’s winners (54:04 min), I wanted to run under 30 min. for the first time and my team partner wanted to run less than 22 min.

This is the course, right through the Zoo (click!). 710 women and 471 men participated in the 5 km run, among them 50 running pairs in our generation teams EE competition. And we reached all our goals! We had fun and we did not get injured. Our team time was 50:49 min., my running partner ran 21:11 min, and I ran 29:38 min.

A co-runner on ,my’ sports ground, who was training for a triathlon, said the other day: „your rivals don’t sleep“ and he was right. It was a much faster race than in 2013, and so in the end we ,only’ came in seventh. The winners – also a man-woman-team – ran 38:48 min. (18:10 min. / 20:48 min.).

After our race we stayed on and cheered the runners from the following races. It was a beautiful day all around.

The winner over 10 km was really cool, it looked like a brisk 400 m sprint the way he ran the two rounds in 32:22 min. That is a pace of 3:14 min. (pace = the average time for 1 kilometre).

This was just about the speed of British Paula Radcliffe in 2003 in London, only she ran it over the whole distance of 42.195 km when she set up the still valid women’s world record for the marathon with 2:15:25 hours. The men’s marathon world record was set up by Wilson Kipsang Kiprotich from Kenia at the Berlin Marathon 2013, his time was 2:03:23 hours (2:55 min. / km).

Just for the record, here are the current world records over 5,000 km as well: In the women’s competition it is held by Tirunesh Dibaba (Ethiopia) with 14:11 min (2.50 min / km), for the men it is Kenenisa Bekele (Ethiopia) with 12:37 min (2:31 min / km).

But of course Running is great fun also without taking the time or setting up records, and what is also nice: in marathon and other distance races outside the track women and men run together. At the Tierparklauf all got the same finisher shirts – so no black or blue or grey or green or red or yellow for the men and pink for the ladies, – and the same medals.