Christmas Cross / 21-27 Dec

Celebrating Boxing Day or what is more commonly known as the 2nd Christmas Day in the Netherlands, I opted to run Kerstcross (Christmas Cross 10K) with my German training partners, Jurgen and Boris.  I intended to run the cross country race as a tempo training run and not at full race effort, because only by Friday I felt that I had recovered from Mescherbergloop.

The race was held in the Brunssumerhiede, which is where Jurgen and I put in most of our runs during the work week.  The course consisted of 2 small loops and 2 large loops.  When the gun went off I immediately found myself in about 15th place. I held back in the first small loop knowing how difficult the course was, and that I'll slowly reel in runners as the race progressed.  I picked off a couple runners on the 2nd loop, but it was the 3rd loop (1st large loop) in which I caught and overtook many runners, mostly on the hills.  On the 4th and final loop I saw the yellow shirt of Dutchman Roger Rousseau and my German friend Boris.  I realized that I had been running fairly good when finally I had these guys in sight.  Unfortunately, their lead on me increased over the last mile as they were battling for 3rd place.  I finished in 5th overall with a time of 36:53, which is irrelevant in a tough course like this one. All in all, it was a good and fun day for our training group as Jurgen, Boris and I took 1st, 3rd and 5th place overall, respectively.

Next race on the schedule is the New Year's Eve 8K race (Trier Silvesterlauf) in Trier, Germany.  I will be pacing Haile Gebrselassie through the first 50 meters of the race. 

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21-27 Dec

Mon: 9.2M easy; sore quads - ouch!

Tues: 8.5M easy; still sore

Wed: 9.5M easy; still a bit sore

Thur: 10M easy

Fri: 10M easy

Sat: Kerstcross 10K - 36:53 5th place; 10.5 miles total

Sun: 14.8M easy

Weekly Total: 72.5 miles