100km German championship in Kienbaum, Germany

Because it took a long time to travel to the sport training centre at Kienbaum, most people arrived on Friday. It was possible to sleep and eat there for a cheap prize. Because the German championships were often held there, a lot of the runners already knew about things. When we arrived about 6pm a lot of runners already were there. They already signed in at the organization office and went to their rooms. Starting at approximately 7pm there was a pasta party at the lunchroom. It was placed about one kilometre away next to the entry.

Saturday at 5am breakfast was placed at the same building as the organization office. The building was next to the start and finishing area. At 6:30am we started for the 20 loops, each 5km. During the morning it was very chilly and the car windows where frozen. During the day the weather got better. But the sun did not break through the clouds a lot. From beginning there was a group of about 20 runners building the leading group. As it came out in the end, not a many of them were able to run that speed. Some of them left the race and others slowed down extremely. So they were passed by many runners.

Even then there were a lot of good and surprising results. Sadly they were two problems. First, one of the runners broke down with some circulation problems. He already had these problems at other races. Luckily there was another runner (a doctor) passing and helped him. Second, we heard at the award ceremony, that there were problems with the timing. As Mr. Mühl said, there were errors up to 50 seconds at the finishing times less then 8:29. So they subtracted 35 seconds from every time, less than 8:29. A "fair way"? That`s a good question! As he said, there was no difference in the placement. But that was not really true. With the team results there were two third places, because of the time correction. Before the correction, Schwaikheim was in third place, but Marpingen was also in third place after the correction. Another problem for the runners is, that personal bests are hard to specify. For example – many people are in front of the aid station filling up the bottles of their runner. So runners had to run around them, thus adding to their times.

Results of the organisation
Report of the DUV 02/08