Running
16. July 2010
Running can be described as my second favorite sports. You just have the most natural way of moving and exercising your body there is. You don't have to put on a lot of clothes and you don't have to have so much special clothes like in cycling. You put on your shoes, a short and a T and start running. Of course its not that easy but thats the feeling I sometimes get when it comes to running.
During my exchange year I used to run a lot and tried to stay in shape without my bike. I attended the Highschool's Track Team and was one of the best long distance runners of the whole school. That made me pretty proud of myself and was a surprising fact for me because when it came to sports and endurance sports obviously cycling at home in Germany, I was used to being one of the worst.
With that self-confidence and motivation I collected in the USA I came back and kept running for a while. I went to 10k competition in Tuttlingen in the Black Forest in 2007 and was proud to improve my time from a 0:40:00 in the year before at the Allmendlauf in Teningen to a 0:38:30. It takes a lot of pressure from yourself when you know, that the only fact which could keep you from winning is your body. There is no factor luck in running, almost no tactic playing around at all.
I didn't continue running during the summer but started in the wintertime after the cycling break in october again and always felt very good. The intensity training in running and the endurance training on the bike have been a very good combination.
In the year 2009 I tried to combine both sports more effectively and sat together with my cycling coach Mark Schneider and my running coach Karl-Heinz Reinsch to form the perfect plan. Our work was pretty successful in case of me finishing a shorten (9,5km) 10k race in 0:31:21.
This was when calculate the 10k time a 0:32:58 which actually is a great time for a cyclist!
I never ran as much as I did in that winter again, but still use running as an additional sports to my winter exercises. You don't have to be as focused as much as in cycling. Just because the velocity is about a third or half of that in cycling, you can relax your mind a little bit better and leave your thoughts the space they sometimes need.
At this point I want to thank Karl-Heinz Reinsch, Rudolf Koczon and the whole club TV Eichstetten for the great support and the nice training sessions we had.