Werl - Soest Silvesterlauf 15km

Its been quite a while since my last race on the street, And Ive only been training for a month since my 4 week training break, so I was a little unsure just how aggressive i should pace this race. I did have hopes that id be able to run a more or less equivalent performance to Münster. And then the weather report was predicting some decent tail winds, so i though maybe 61:30 was possible.

On the day the promised tailwinds didnt show up, in the morning there was no wind, but by the race start they were more or less 90° to the course, so no real wind advantage. I decided to run the race by feel, rather than try and stick to the splits required for 61:30

Prior to the race I did a bit of warmup and then handed of my jacket and bag, then it was a final stop at the toilet before lining up in the start corals.... There were 4 blocks at the front for those who had supplied fast times, and then one big block at the back for the rest.... but as allways in the first km i passed dozens of runners who were obviously likely to run a 1:20-1.30 times... i dont see the point in a chip race... your actually setting yourself up to go out too fast.

I didnt go out too fast this time, managing to hold the first Km to 4:15 before settling into a more appropriate 4:10 Id ridden the course from finish to start in the summer on my bike, I had it pretty flat in my memory, but it actually had a number of rolling hills. I clocked my slowest km on one at km7 a 4:24 a 12-13s slowdown, something to remember for the hills at boston.

After that however it was gently downhill and i managed to string two km's at 4:08 and then another at 4:06 together... holding the pace better on the albeit smaller rises towards the end of the course.

This wasnt really much of a race for me as i was surronded the whole time by other runners, although i was doing considerably more overtaking as i was being overtaken. What was good was to see the km's ticking off at gMP for boston (or better) and me feeling reasonably comfortable doing it. I ran in my Brooks Green Silence, the shoes that im seriously considering for Boston. They were pretty comfortable through out.

I passed the 14km sign expecting it to be the 13km... so i picked up the pace a little and pulled back the last guy to overtake me, and then continued to wind up the pace through the last km, to give a final sprint finish to the line.... actually if id known where the finish line was id have probably been able to start my wind up a bit sooner. I crossed the line, put my head down for a few deep breaths then remembered to stop my garmin.

Later on checking the results My time was 1:02:16 not quite the ambitious wind assisted time id original targeted, but i was more than happy with it... its a good 3:30 faster than my previous PB, and the VDOT score of 51.2 is pretty much inline with the 51.24 from Münster. Its given me a good bit of confidence going into the next stage of my training for Boston.

here the tail from lady Garmins perspective.