Sun, Dec 8, 2019 - 10K - 01:01:31
10K Britzer Garten Lauf
For our last race of the year, there was really only a choice between Plänterwald, which we have run twice and is a rather unspectacular three loops in a forest in Treptow, and one we hadn't heard about yet, the 10K Gropius Lauf in Britzer Garten. This turned out to be a quite small race (65 people in the 10K) but well-organized and with a special touch that the helpers in the race were all mentally challenged young people from a school in Berlin somewhere. Right at the beginning of the race it began to rain a cold drizzle, which we braved until the start, and then took off.  
 
The route was three 3K loops through the Britzer Garten with nice landscaped scenery, and then one small 1K loop, so we were able to get our times for the 3K, 6K, and 9K. Even at 6K, Hannah was running under a 6:00 pace and Gisi was nowhere to be seen behind us. Hannah crossed 9K at 56:00 and then sprinted it in for her 5th fastest time ever: 01:01:31, just 17 seconds away from her first 10K time in Bremen in 2013, back when she had a completely different light, little girl body-build, so it was quite a comeback for her after six years of constant running, workouts, training, and staying in shape. I also think our weekly 6K morning runs we have been doing for over a month now gave her an extra boost. In any case, she's back near 01:00:00. I asked her if she thinks she'll be able to run a 10K in under one hour again, and she said, "Ja, sicher."  
 
After Hannah finished, I went running back along the course to find Gisi who, although she finished almost four full minutes after Hannah, had her fastest time in over a year (01:05:10).  
 
So that closes out our 2019 race season, 2020 will probably open up with Hannah's wish to run a timed 5K somewhere to see how far under 30:00 she can get, probably the one I did last year in Spandau in January. Then in February we have our French-fluency week in Marseilles and Lyon with our 23K in the countryside just north of Lyon, which will be Hannah's longest run ever so far, and a challenging hilly run.