Mud Baths

Sunday

Just a short 12k on the erg. Related to sports, I spent a considerable amount of time with the Polar A360 that Lenka got for Christmas. It’s a cool watch, with optical heart rate measuring at the wrist, but the first synchronization and actualization takes ages. In the leaflet, they say you can get up and running directly from the Android Polar Flow app. No way. The initial sync and update takes so long that the bluetooth disconnects. In the end I had to do it through the USB cable.

We had quite a lot of snow on Christmas Eve. Robin made a Darth Vader snowman:

On Christmas, temperatures were suddenly much warmer, and during the day all the snow disappeared.

Monday

With Lenka and Iva, we participated in the Christmas run in Syrovice. The girls ran the 5k (one loop) and I did the 10k. As you can see from the pictures, it was quite a muddy event.

You should have seen the girls’ faces when I sent them of for the warming up run. They clearly weren’t happy that they had to run in this mud with their clean pink running shoes and matching running clothes. 🙂

I didn’t have very big plans for this run. I was just there as a chauffeur for the girls, and planned to take it easy. Of course, this plan was discarded when I met Eduard, a Masters rower from my club, at the start line.

I had to finish ahead of him.

Still, I managed to take it easy in the first round. In the muddy ascent through the vineyards, I managed to get a bit ahead of him. With his big posture, he has more difficulty than I taking over in the crowd.

After the muddy vineyards, the run continues on asphalt. During the short climbs I was much faster than the people surrounding me.

The run then loops back towards the village, where you get to run the steps towards the church, a short but pretty steep climb. Then immediately down again, and on to the second loop.

I knew Eduard was somewhere behind me, but I had no idea if he was ten seconds or two minutes behind. That kept me running at quite a high pace. In the vineyards, a couple of runners passed me, and every time I was worried it would be Eda. It wasn’t him. On the asphalt part, I took back the runners who had passed me in the vineyards.

The second time to run the church steps. Now it really hurt, but luckily, after that it’s just a few hundred meters to the finish.

I crossed the line in 42:25 and not long after that I heard the speaker announce the fastest woman. Oh, that’s good! It doesn’t happen very often in running events that I don’t get chicked. 🙂

So, what was supposed to be an easy run may have turned out to be one of my better runs of this winter.

https://www.strava.com/activities/811673254/overview