While I’m sitting in the airplane on my way back to Shanghai, I’m writing now these update for the blog.
Today it was again a perfect race day. Perfect weather and climate, perfect dinner yesterday evening, a huge carbo loading. So this morning nothing could stop me to run again some new personal best times. In 1H : 34M : 36S I finished here the HM in this remote area in the far north of China.
At 42° latitude and 400m above sea this whole area looks like my home area in Germany. The blue sky and white clouds made it perfect. That’s the points what makes a race a brilliant event and motivated. Not to compare with a run in the smoggy hell of Shanghai or Beijing.
As I already mentioned before, it was my first invitational race and I ran this together with around 20 professionals from Africa and 20’ish westerners who live around China, all invited by the organizers who did a very good job. All in all very nice and friendly people.
Thanks guys, it was an honor to run with you.
In China the marathon races just started to grow and every organizer like to call the event an “international” race. So there is a big need for foreigners joining these races special the small ones in remote areas. So I am very sure that I will meet these guys again during one of next races. One of the guys will also run next week the Taiyuan marathon, another guy will join the race in Osaka in October. So I am looking forward for a constant meet and greet with some new friends.
One next weekend I will have a similar trip. Flight from Shanghai to the event on Friday, running Saturday morning and fly back on a Saturday afternoon. It sounds a lot of stress but apart from the rush hour traffic jam in Shanghai everything is easy going and hopefully trips like this will become a routine on weekends.
For next Saturday’s marathon I will not go to do a new PB. Main target is to finish running the 42km in an even time without being exhausted at the finish line. Actually it will be a test run for the 63km Patagonia marathon end of this month.
Recovery and very slow runs during the next days will be the tasks while I’m back in Suzhou.
