Sat, Dec 5, 2020 - 25K - 00:47:13
25K Neukölln Run with 11.8K Trial Run for This Month's Urban Race with Hannah
For our 34th consecutive month of running a 10K or better, even through the Covid era, Hannah and I are planning our December 2020 Urban Race where we will start at the same time, she running 10K from Teltow and I running 11.8K from Neukölln, and we'll race to see who gets home first.  
 
Today was the day for the test run of my 11.8 route. On race day, I'll take the S-Bahn out to Sonnenallee and then do a warm-up run to the starting line from there, but today, I turned it into a 25K run by running to the starting line from home via the former Tempelhof airfield which is always a unique experience to run across.  
 
The starting line was easy enough to find, and the route easy enough to follow, but it's good to have run it once to reduce any unnecessary stress on race day, and since I'm going to need every second I can manage if I'm going to beat Hannah. I definitely have more stop lights and streets to cross on my route, about 7 in total to her 3, but we plan on doing it quite early in the morning so we expect less traffic. And streets, traffic, dogs, etc. are part of the landscape of an urban run, so all appropriate obstacles. And we will have our stop watches that we can pause when we are forced to stop, our final time on the watch being what counts as our official time. 
 
I was surprised by how hammered my legs were at about 6K into my 11.8K run, or about 19K of my total run. I definitely am not in marathon training condition anymore, but then, there has to be a marathon coming up for getting into marathon training condition and we are currently in Covid lockdown with no marathons in sight. 
 
In any case, while in lockdown we need to be proactive and create our own races, so Hannah and I are looking forward to our first Urban Race later this month.