I hadn’t planned to write a race report for each and every race I do, since most of them are probably not interesting, especially for ordinary 10km races. This one is special, though.

See, when I did my trip down the memory lane I found this gem:

This is, as far as I can recollect, my all-time PR over 10km: 0h 45’18”, way back when I still did triathlons. In 2011 I ran a 48’50” at a local charity race and in 2012 I managed to do the same charity race in 46’03”. Close to my PR from September 1991, but still almost a minute off. Until May 1st, 2013. A few weeks ago I registered for the Spring race in Dachau, north of Munich. This is a small race, less than 300 participants on the 10km and a really flat course. The weather presented itself with an overcast sky (typical for the region north of Munich) and temperatures around 18° Celsius – perfect running conditions.

How fast can I go?

Having done some interval training for the recent Half Marathon I wanted to find out how long I can keep my threshold tempo. I lined up right at the front of the pack, knowing that I would get passed a lot in the beginning. When the gun went off the fast guys were gone immediately (the later winner would finish in 34’07”, close to a 3’24”/km pace), but I found a group of 4’-4’15”/km runners and set out to hang onto them as long as possible. I was really surprised by a 5km split of 21’15”, averaging 04’15”, and my legs felt still reasonably well. The only thing that started to bother me – again – where blisters developing on both big toes. But that’s the beauty of a 10km race, you can basically power through everything, especially after the 5km mark. I ignored my feet and pushed on, tried to get a good draft for a short headwind section and kept the tempo as high as possible. On the last 3-4km I noticed that my pace dropped towards 4’25”/km but I knew I could keep that pace until the end and it would still be an awesome time. The official time was 43’24”, finishing 83rd out of 254 male starters, 11th in my age group.