I’m hopelessly behind with my race reports. There’s the Wylandlauf footrace and the sprint triathlon in Zug from a few weeks ago (double race weekend!), on last weekend I raced Gigathlon in a Team of Five (two mountain running stages on two days) and tomorrow I’ll do my first Olympic distance triathlon, 5150 Zurich.

Let’s just say that I’m a tiny little bit concerned about swimming 1500 metres in open water.

The final race plan for 2011 is still not finished, and again, a race is coming up. Tomorrow: Bremgarter Reusslauf, an 11 km race in the neighbouring canton of Aargau. It’s the first time I participate in this rather old event, it takes place for the 29th time this year. It’s part of the national Swiss Runners series as well as the regional AZ Goldläufe. They’re not series with an overall ranking, more like seals of quality for races.

This is what the course looks like (I’ll do the purple one):

This is a perfect opportunity to work towards my goal of running a half marathon with a sub 4 min/km pace sometime this or next year. I recently did a (very) private 10K on my house course and ended up somewhere between 38 and 39 minutes, so with the added pressure of a competition, it should certainly be doable for 11K as well.

The race offers a neat little service: you can get your own pace wristband with your overall goal pace. I think this picture is meant to show how this makes pacemakers in human shape obsolete:

The best thing about these is that they take the course profile into account. Even though it’s supposed to be rather flat, the km pace for a goal pace of, e.g., 3:45 (might that be my goal pace?) ranges from 3:27 to 4:02. Shown here: the profile in black, pace in red and speed in blue dotted.

Let’s see how that works out! I’ll use my brand new heart rate strap (because I left my perfectly fine old one in Hamburg…) and the Cloudsurfer. As for clothes, I’m not sure yet, it’s going to be rather cold, but not too cold; there shouldn’t be any rain. I’ll decide tomorrow.

A lot of friends will run as well: fast Gigathlon guy Kaspar, Silvan (with whom I ran around Aussenalster in Hamburg), Karin (who seemingly runs as many races as possible didn’t show up, tssss…), Reto (who runs stuff like the Jungfrau Marathon)… and Sven Riederer, Swiss pro triathlete, Olympic medallist and ITU Gold Group member. If I see him, I’ll ask for a picture, like a real fanboy.

Fingers to be crossed: starting 14:30 CET for about 40 minutes :)

This weekend, I’ll try myself at back-to-back races. Very short ones, that is.

Up first on Saturday: Basler Stadtlauf. This one is close to a sprint with 5.5 km course length, or 2.5 laps of this:

Apparently, one of the bridges is a bit nasty because it’s not entirely flat, but the rest should be quite fast. If there’s no hailstorm on Saturday, I think I’ll (ab)use my Nike Free’s as race flats. They’re really much lighter than the shoes I race with usually, and running in a city hopefully won’t require too much stability from the shoe. Plus my old shoes have reached the end of their lifetime, I’d say.

Because it’s so short, I want to be faster than 4 min/km. I’ve run with almost that pace for the first 10 km of Hallwilerseelauf (including a bit downhill, to be clear), so it should definitely be possible. I just have to watch that I’m not too far at the back of my wave so people don’t block me.

Basel is about one hour from Zurich. Sunday’s race is closer: it’s the Hegemer Chlauslauf in Winterthur, a 20 minutes train ride. This is what the course looks like (I’ll run the red 8.8 km lap):

The elevation profile looks moderate, but there’s a really mean thing at the very end: you run up a flight of stairs. Must be a treat with the legs all acidic.

Hegi (hence “Hegemer”) is the neighbourhood of Winterthur where I grew up. The race is organised by the gymnastic club where I was a member about 23 years ago, the numbers are handed out in my elementary school and the course goes past my parents’ place and is largely the same as what I used to do when I went running when I lived there. In short: it’s the most local race possible and I’m really looking forward to it.

It’s not really a race, it’s more of a time trial: you get an e-stick and can run anytime between 10:00 and 15:00. You just check in and out. Thanks to that non-competitiveness, I even managed to get my mom and my sister to participate! They’ll run the blue 6 km course.

I don’t really have a goal for this one, I just want to enjoy all the places I’ve known for so long, not blow up because of Saturday’s race and finish strong on the stairs.

Voilà! The weekend may come now.