Yesterday’s race in Zurich was the last of this year’s ZüriLaufCup series. It took place just a 15 minutes tram ride from my place, so of course I was very late and could only throw my stuff in a corner and headed to the start.

There I walked into a friend from work and we had a little chat about how I had no idea what to expect, and he told me that the first part was just going to be steep uphill. Thank you.

And off we went! Can you find me?

Okay, I’m the blue left arm behind the guy in the purple t-shirt on the left in the picture.

For the first 300 m or so (which were nicely downhill), my toe hurt a little, but then it was fine. Coincidentally, that was also when the uphill part started. The overall elevation profile looked like this:

In short, I didn’t feel powerful for most of the race, my stomach was a bit upset, and it seemed that I magically attracted people who tested my composure. I have a hard time not getting annoyed by people who seem to cut my way all the time, or breathe super loud, or accelerate just when I want to pass them.

On the non-annoying side were the spectators who were there quite numerously (considering it was a not so pretty Saturday and we were somewhere in the forest) and friendly.

There’s also pictures! Here’s one:

Can you see me, far in the background?

Here I am, a few seconds later:

The last two km were lots of downhill, very enjoyable. The virtual pacer on my Garmin who would have brought me to a 1:00:00 finish was far away, so I missed that goal. I also missed the 1:01:30 goal and finished in 1:02:27. That was not a very good relative placing, worse than most other ZüriLaufCup races, but still good enough for 728 cup points, so I improved overall by 82 points. There’s no overall cup ranking yet, so I have no idea what that one looks like, but I’m pretty okay with my first ZüriLaufCup season.

After the race I bumped into Fiola. I’ve known her from her website/twitter and we have a few common friends. She’s a former top rower who has turned to (extreme) endurance sports such as Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge, Inferno Triathlon, Ironman Switzerland, 12 and 24 hours MTB races, so she’s a machine! She placed 4th in her age group. I was all the professional blogger and took a picture with her, but I’m not allowed to publish that one (“nooo, you can’t publish that, I’m post race blablabla…” ;)), but I’m allowed to put this one from the official race pictures here:

I’d say my first web-to-real-life conversion was a success! Maybe she can drag me along some trails sometime soon.

Now I’m recovering a bit until next weekend (Lucerne half marathon). And by recovering I mean going to the pool to work on my awful swim form.

PS. Garmin details here.

PPS. Edited to remove some nasty remarks about other runners that don’t belong here. Mea culpa!

PPPS. So I wasn’t allowed to post that picture of us, but SHE was ;)