German chapmionship 50km in Marburg, Germany

Marburg had organised the German championship on 50km already a few times. The start was scheduled at 10am, but from Würzburg it was almost a 200km car drive to get there. Therefore, I decided to drive up on Friday and stay the night with a friend. Also, because he had organised an IVV walk on Sunday, which we planned to take part in. All other runners from the LG Würzburg, Christoph Hoffmann, Udo Wegmann, Georg Braungart, Lutz Fürchow, Vinodkumar Shrinivas and Matthias Schmidt arrived on Saturday. Also Florian Reus, which had a short drive from Frankfurt, arrived on Saturday morning. My wife and I arrived at 8am’s at the Georg-Grassman stadium. There was the pick up for the running bibs. We had just got a coffee, when Florian and his girl friend Nicole showed up. It did not take long until the rest of the LG Würzburg runners showed up. The start location had changed in comparison to the Marburg champion ship events before. In the past we started at the Steinmühle. It was very confined as the start line was just in front of the gym. This was different now. Now it was a 500m walk to get to the start and finish line. There was nothing around. Without some minor changes the course remained the same. Just the start was located at a different place and we ran the other way around.

At about 9:30am we walked towards the start line. It took us much longer than we suspected. So there was not much time left before the start. We went quickly to the toilet, took some team photos and hurried to the start. Actually we are lucky, because we did not have to wait a long time in the cold weather. It was very foggy when we started. According to the weather forecast the sun should break through. I almost finished had finished till the sun came out. When we arrived in the morning the road was very icy. So I was afraid, that the course would be as well. But that was luckily a wrong fear.

All the other runners from the other courses started with us. So at the beginning people pushed a lot in the narrow way. Luckily the field pulled apart quickly. The top runners sped away very quickly, because they set themselves high goals. Another reason for starting fast was the strong field of runners. So there was no time to start easy. Florian was going for an easy train run, because of the 24-world championship in April. So our starting speed was calculated for 3:30h finishing time. We had a good run until we reached 35km. Then I had to slow down and he sped away. Vin planned to go for under 3:20h. Therefore he had to speed from beginning on. We all met again at the finish.

After we finished, we went to the showers. Now the advantage of the new starting place showed up. There were plenty of gorgeous warm showers.