Humble yourself...
...or running will do it for you
What better way to finish the year than with the obligatory New Year’s run in the Olympic Park, in Munich. For years this has been my playground for PBs or SBs, despite a pretty challenging course. It’s been the early years of my running "career" with a golden rain of constant progress and improvement at every basically race and race distance.
Around 2019 this pleasant spoiling started to crumble. Not because I had maxed out my capabilities, though. The reason was that my running goals got bigger and required a much more specific and long-range preparation. Most recent examples were my preparations for my first 100k race in 2021 and this year’s Western States 100 Miler.
After training for longer ultramarathons for 2 years now, todays 10k result was a harsh reality check. To be honest, it’s a bit embarrassing that I beforehand secretly expected a "solid time". Although I had nothing specific in mind, I obviously still believed that I could pull off some kind of magic trick today. Well, that was not the case and the first couple of minutes after the race I was very disappointed.
Fortunately this disappointment didn’t last very long and gave way to rational thoughts and useful assessments. Yes, I have committed to road racing for the next couple of month. But improvement is a process and requires time. After all I do not train for a fast 10k but for a marathon. A completely different kind of race.
With that being said, I am thankful for today’s experience. There’s a quote that came to my mind:
"Humble yourself, or running will do it for you."
Today it was running that brought me back down to earth.
