Racing season
As spring is approaching (well, in Jyväskylä it was snowing again today), both the international and domestic road running season is on it's way. The weekend saw 2 great marathons in London and Rotterdam. While London saw a German victory on the woman's side with Irina Mikitenko running a new German record (2:24:14h), Rotterdam was the place to be, for Finnish marathon running: Janne Holmen set a new Finnish record on the mens side in 2:10:46h, finishing in 9th place. Congratulations to both! Of course there was a lot more action in those races to write about, but other websites already did the job.
I myself also had a race (on Saturday): it was the district championships in road running of Central Finnland (Keski-Suomen PM-maantiejuoksut). The competition was a 12,3 km race on a rather hilly loop, which had to be run 5 times. I took second place in 41:00min (inofficial) the splits for each round being 7:57/8:10/8:15/8:21/8:17. I could feel the calves from last weeks halfmarathon already early in the race (~after 3K) and that's why I didn't push the pace. At the end I didn't really want to challenge my clubmate Tuomas, who made the pace pretty much the whole race and finished 3 seconds ahead of me. Anyway, I don't know if I had won even if I had given everything for the last 2kms. Tuomas is in really good shape and he can for sure go for a 1:08h in next weeks Finnish Halfmarathon Nationals if the conditions are good.
Probably I am not allowed to run in this Finnish Championships because there were some problems and strange regulations for participation (since I am a foreigner and might have a shot at the medals they are scared it seems :). I was a bit upset about those news, because it would have been a nice way to see where I am in Finnland - last year my time of the German Nationals would have been indeed only 1 second short of the bronce medal. Anyway, now I can focus even more on my 2nd "big race" this spring: The German marathon nationals in Mainz. There are only 20days left!