I know most people really do not care about my hobby. Even fewer care about my progress. But, I do, so I am going to write a couple of posts, sharing with the world things it does not care about.

Enjoy.

Hakim makes me race more

If you have been diligently following my blog you will know two things. First, I now live in a small university town in the German hinterland. Second, I now have a trainer. An incredibly kind man, and an elite runner, who for some reason takes a big chunk out of his time to train losers like me for no monetary compensation whatsoever.

One thing that Hakim keeps telling us to do is to race. The biggest upside to having a trainer, and a group that likes to race, is that I do more races. I mean look at the data. I have been with Hakim and co. for the last two years, which happen also to be my best racing years. not my fastest, but my best.

Hakim also makes me faster

The last two years have been characterized by return-to-form. My personal best (PB) times are all quite old. From a time when I was still a frisky young man in his early thirties. Full of hopes, dreams, and with a pleasantly naive mind. A mind that made him run fast and care-free.

I am now in my later thirties, running on empty hopes, nightmares and with a mature cynical mind.

Sorry, I don’t mean to bum you out. And the paragraph above is perhaps a bit exaggerated. I am still quite naive.

In 2019 my form was good. My best 10 km that year was 40:44 and my best 5 km (Parkrun in Köln) was 18:51. In 2020 my newborn son and COVID made sure it was impossible for me to race, I mean look at the chart above–a total race-crash. My form dropped a bit during that time, but getting back on the track with Hakim in Marburg quickly had an effect.

Compared to last year, I improved significantly on all distances, except the marathon.

Now, as any good statistician knows, it is hard to compare times across races. Some are hilly, others not. It is also hard to compare the same race across time, a hot day can add a few minutes to a marathon.

However, the more factors you manage to keep constant the better the comparison (if only I could keep my age constant!) I therefore also compared races which I ran both in 2022 and 2023. And when I did I was quite pleased with my self. I shaved more than four minutes off the Half-marathon in Marburg.

Next year racing goals

Next year will be my half-marathon year. I will make two attempts to get my 10 km time closer to my PB. I doubt I will make it under 39 minutes, but who knows. But, I am determined to finally break my half-marathon PB. I suspect that to happen either in Frankfurt in March or in Marburg in July. Depending on how I am looking after Köln, I might go for my PB in Frankfurt.

Conditional on Hakim approving my plans, of course.