Yesterday, on a last-minute whim (prompted by Sjouke), I ran 10km in the Escher Kulturlauf. Weather was excellent, training slightly better than for the half marathon, and time was reasonable. Surprisingly enough, the track is a bit longer than 10km — according to the booklet it’s 10.7km, and sure enough, we passed a 10km sign quite some distance before the finish. That was actually quite funny — I hadn’t realised it would be longer until I passed that sign :)
Daniel and Marjan joined for the 10km run, and Sjouke ran the 10 miles / 16 km. Daniel kept up with me for the first 2km, and then dropped back some 25 metres. Didn’t see him anymore for quite a while. At the 10km sign, I was overtaken by Danielle (one of luxembourg’s top amateurs and a secretary at uni.lu), and I joined her… for about 40 metres. Damn, that girl runs fast! Anyway, I reverted to my old pace, got some wind back in my lungs and turned the last corner. I shifted gears and sped up a bit, wanting to make a nice time. Suddenly, Daniel strutted past, and waved jovially. Grrrrr….. That was sooooo not going to happen. But I didn’t have that many reserves left, I couldn’t sprint the remaining 100m. So I waited a short bit, and shifted into an even higher gear. Almost caught up to Daan, but then he glanced over his shoulder, saw me, laughed, and out of nowhere just started sprinting. Pfffft… no way I could put on a power explosion like that. He finished 5 seconds before me
In the end, my time was 1:02:53.7, which is just (but only just) over 10km per hour (Note that due to confusion on the website, they marked me and Daniel as having run 16km, and Sjouke as having run 10km. It’s the other way around). And they refuse to spell my name correctly, even though I did correct them when they copied it from my inscription form… man! (I know why, but still… if I correct you, and I can see you wrote it down correctly, please keep that, okay? Plus, somehow they always mess up the “o”, but adding the “c” happens a lot less… le anyway)