Tag Archives: Half Marathon

A bigger kick than politics can ever give… Berlin inline skating

I seldom blog about it these days, but sport is important for me as a way to stay healthy and – to a large extent – to stay sane as a freelancer. Haruki Murakami talks about these sorts of things in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. While I do run and cycle to keep fit, inline skating is really my sport…

The Berlin Half Marathon is always the season opener – it took place yesterday. The map and graphs from my GPS watch are below. I’m tremendously happy with the result – 59th position in the fitness category in 41:14, knocking 5 minutes off my previous best, and for the first time averaging more than 30km/h in a race. The next British man was in 670th position, more than 30 minutes slower… Now how much training do I do for the rest of the summer?

Nothing in politics can possibly equal the kick of getting over that finishing line in a personal best time…

Speed Profile
http://jonworth.eu/trailrunner-skate/trailrunner/4KDPNTQ.gpx

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70th position in the Berlin Half Marathon (inline skating)

I’m absolutely stunned – I finished in 70th position (among the ‘fitness’ skaters – i.e. anyone except the absolute pros) in the Berlin Half Marathon inline skating 10 days ago, with a net time of 47:01. I knew the race had been OK – that time is 1 minute slower than my best time, but it was raining and the corners were very slippery and that knocked a couple of minutes off the time for sure… but 70th place! I’m so, so incredibly happy with that, considering there were more than 1000 people starting the race, and 105 places better than my 2009 finish.

Here’s the GPS map of the course, and the video of me crossing the line:

http://jonworth.eu/trailrunner-skate/trailrunner/JA7YFTQ.kml

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46:09, 175th place for the Berlin Half Marathon 2009

OK, so the first race of the season is behind me – the Berlin Inline Half Marathon took place this morning. My result is here. I managed the 21km in 46 mins 9 seconds, giving an average speed for the race of 27.82km/h. Overall I finished in 175th place of the race as a whole, and 24th in ‘Altersklasse: MH’ (although I’m not sure exactly what that means!) Essentially this is a very respectable result – there were 1800 skaters taking to the roads, so I finished in the top 10% – quite something for only my second ever race!

I had set the target of 45 minutes, yet it was clear this was not going to be reached right from the start – more than 5km due west from Unter den Linden through Tiergarten into a strongish headwind. The south section, particularly towards Potsdamer Platz was the highlight – excellent quality of the tarmac and plenty of skaters of a similar level.

I must however admit that I don’t yet have the tactics right for these races. Unlike the marathon last September this time I did manage to join some groups of skaters, but there was no real communication within the groups about speed and strategy. As I recall from cycle training as a 14 year old you are supposed to split the responsibility at the front of a group so you take turns against the wind; I tried this a couple of times, but the others failed to follow.

Anyway, here’s the map of the race and I’m heading to bed for an early night after a successful start to the season!

http://jonworth.eu/trailrunner/4YRELJN.gpx

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