Sun, Sep 8, 2019 - 10K - 00:52:32
10K Tierparklauf with Gisi, Karla and Simon
Our family had run the first Tierpark Lauf back in 2012, with was our first family-of-four race together, and so the idea was that this year would be a 5-years-later repeat family run, with Hannah and I doing the 10K in preparation for our Oslo Half Marathon in a couple weeks, and Gisi and Karla would run the 5K as a generation team as the "Hartmann Zebras", as we all did five years ago as the "giraffes" (Gisi and Hannah) and "snow owls" (Karla and I).  
 
As circumstances turned out, Hannah had just come back from Rome with a bit of a cold and decided it would be better not to run, and Karla's boyfriend Simon wanted to run with us as well, which was cool. So it turned out that Karla and Simon ran the 5K together, but we needed someone else to run Hannah's 10K. Since Gisi and I are planning to do the Leipzig Half Marathon in October, she decided to run the 5K and the 10K as a 15K training run.  
 
Karla has run a constant 38-something for her last four 5K races, but with Simon at her side, they both came in with a faster 00:37:25, and Gisi with a steady 00:31:51.  
 
After the 5K, I swapped Gisi's 5K shoe chip with Hannah's 10K chip, and we walked together to the starting line. I hadn't run a 10K at full speed for years so was silently hoping to get a sub-00:50:00. I held the 5-minute-per-kilometer pace until just before 6K, which I passed at 30:13. I then had a speed-bunny trying to pass me a couple times at 7K and 8K and kept ahead of her, but she finally passed me after 8K, but this competition kept me motivated to not lose too much time. I eventually came in at 00:52:32 which I was pretty happy with for an off-season time. 
 
If you have kids--no matter what age--this is a wonderful race for the whole family. The race has two races for kids (Bambinilauf and Kinderlauf), two 10K races, and a 5K generation-race where you pick an animal and run as a parent-child team.