Motivated by brilliant sunshine with 25°C and a good friend whom I met four times during the run I finished the 51km Harzquerung successfully on Saturday, April 28th 2012.

I have to admit that although I did train for about two months in preparation my largest training distance of 32 km was more than a joke compared to the actual run. I wasn’t sure whether I would make it to the finish line in an acceptable time both before and during the race. Nevertheless I had thought about what time might be possible and concluded that based on my training experiences I might make it in 6 hours which would be 8.5 km/h overall.

During the run my main problem was the altitude changes, because I was not used to that at all, so I underestimated the uphill parts. For the first 15 kilometers I really wondered why everybody walked uphill instead of running, so I surpassed several runners (which was difficult on those small paths) only to see them again when we got back down, because most of them sprinted downhill which I considered too risky (I care about my knees). Of course running uphill didn’t continue when I reallized how energy-draining it really was.

So in general it was a huge success and another important milestone, I met nice people, had a nice trip through that wonderful area and enjoyed the good weather. I finished after 5:41:31, so my average speed was 9 km/h for 51 km (1300 meters ascending and 1400 meters descending).

Thanks a lot to the organizers and volunteers who supplied us with food and drinks along the route! I’m pretty sure I’ll do this again 🙂

Previous milestones:

• 10km “City-Nachtlauf” in Berlin on July 31st 2010 in 0:41:43 hours (14.4 km/h)
• 22.1 km “Stadtlauf” in Berlin on August 28th 2011 in 1:33:00 hours (13.6 km/h)
• 10km “IGA-Lauf” in Berlin on May 20th 2012 in 0:44:45 hours (13.4 km/h)