Off to Hungary
I trained to Basel and then flew to Vienna on Thursday evening. The lovely Edit picked me up from the airport and we drove back to her home town in…
BBQ at the Dreisam
It was another deliciously hot day and Rebecca had a cunning plan. The plan was to head down to the Dreisam (the river that flows through Freiburg) and do some…
Some riding
As it has been overly toasty recently (over 30 degrees) I've taken to riding in the mornings before work. Well actually I've only done this twice but it's been good.…
Inferno Half Marathon
Julian and I headed to Switzerland on Friday evening and camped the night in Lauterbrunnen. On Saturday we ran the Inferno half marathon, a “Devilish Mountain Race” as the website describes it. The race starts at the Jungfrau camp ground in Lauterbrunnen and ascends to the top of Schilthorn . It’s 21 km and has 2175 m of climbing. I did the same thing in reverse in Februrary but on skis and that certainly made things a little easier. Summer seems to have returned to this part of Europe. It was very toasty on race day with 32 degrees reported well into the ascent. The race started about 10 am from our camp ground and we began sweating our way up the mountain. My legs seemed ok after last week’s marathon but despite this that crafty Julian pulled away and I didn’t see him again until the finish line.
Above: Cris running with the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau in the background.
I stopped at each water station and downed a few cups of isotonic drink. There is a flat section in the race before you reach Mueron but aside from this it’s just up, up, up. During the last quarter of the race I started to get little twinges of cramp in my legs but managed to hold it off until reaching the finish line at 2970 m. My race time was 3:08.09,2. Julian took about 15 minutes out of me.
Above left: Running past Swiss flags. Above right: Running up the valley about 3 km from the summit.
Above left: The last 500 m of suffering along a ridge to the top of Schilthorn. Above right: Cris and Julian at the finish with the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau in the background.
Above: The views at the finish weren’t too hard on the eyes. The Eiger is the peak on the left hand side.
Inferno Half Marathon August 2011_web[maptype=G_HYBRID_TYPE]
Above: Map of the race.
Below: A few videos from the race. As my crappy flash video player does not seem to like the mp3 sound track you’ll have to watch without sound. I’m far too lazy to fix it. You could always snoop through my HTML source and download the video file and play it using some decent player…
Above: The Swiss play a fanfare at the start of the race.
Above: Running with an awesome view of the mountains.
Above: Plodding up the valley towards Schilthorn.
Above: Nearing the Schilthorn summit and finish line.
Gebirgsmarathon Immenstadt
Gitti convinced me to do a mountain race in the weekend so off I trotted to Allgäu on Friday afternoon (these days trotting can be accomplished by way of the…