Steve J's crazy Austrian Half

Pre-race "preparation" by bus.

First, let me write a wrap up of what will probably go down in history as my worst pre-race preparation ever. On Friday night after my last blog post, we settled in for a wonderful 4-5 hours of sleep. We got up at 3:00 am Saturday morning to get ready for the Bucur family to pick us up and get us to the bus station at the outskirts of Bucharest. By 6:00 am, the bus left for our 23.5 hour ride. I did my best to loosen up after every bus stop and Maria and I did a few short sprints in the Romanian city of Sibiu at about 2 pm (6 hrs in) on Saturday. I did my best to stay hydrated without overdoing it (the bus had no toilet - got it?). Thanks to the Helpmeet, I did have my pre-race pasta dinner on the bus since she brought some ziti's and grilled chicken along. We were near the Romanian border town of Adad by about 10:00 pm (14 hrs in). The Helpmeet was really cool. She let me get my own two seats while she sat with Maria so I could try to sleep (I sleep very poorly on any moving object). Unfortunately, a whole bunch of people boarded the bus at Adad and there were no empty seats on the bus. A Romanian kid took the seat next to me and ended up sleeping ON me for most of the night - nice. I may have slept for 4 hours Saturday night, but since I kept waking up every half hour to push this kid off me (personal space please!), I think 4 hours of sleep is a generous estimate.

In Vienna, finally!

We arrived in Vienna at 5:30 am Sunday only 4.5 hours from race time. I navigated our group to the apartment at 6:30 am. I did get to lay down for 30 min while Dana and Maria went out and scrounged up some coffee, croissants and a "red bull" energy drink for me to have before the race. At 9:00 we headed to the tram stop and then the U-bahn (subway) to the race. We saw a guy wearing running clothes and I asked him about where the race number and chip pickup was. He was Austrian, but spoke great English and was really friendly. The race started right at Vienna's largest shopping mall, called Donauzentrum.

Race Start

The place was a mad house, but a well-organized mad house. With 1500+ runners and their friends and families, you're going to have a crowd no matter what. We cut things a little close and I almost forgot to pick up my timing chip. Gabby, after watching many runners doing warm-up runs, asked me if I was going to warm up. There was just no time so I told him I do my warm-up during the race (I said this confidently to make him think I actually knew what I was doing). After dumping my clothes and stuff on Dana, I hustled to the start and tried to find a spot in the middle of the pack. All the announcements were in German, so the only thing I understood was the starting horn.

I don't know if it was the adrenaline or the "red bull" I guzzled on the U-bahn, but I felt surprisingly good when I started running. After all, this is supposed to be fun! The Sun was out and the temp was right around 50 degrees with no wind. After 36 torturous hours of getting to this race, I was finally relaxed.

The Course

The race course was really nice. It was a loop with 3 laps around the "Alte Donau" which translates Old Danube. I think it's a lake which was part of the nearby Danube river before it was diverted for flood control (If you're German is really good, just click the link for details). I like the 3 laps because I could see my six person "fanclub" at each 1/3 of the race and that was great encouragement.

My fancy schmancy GPS watch was the bomb. It was my first race running with this watch and it won't be the last. In addition to the really geeky map plots (see below), it really was useful for me to keep my pace in control. In a large race like this, you are constantly trying to get running room in the beginning and you tend to run too fast. My watch was set to "avg mile pace" so I could watch my pace during each mile.

The Numbers!

Finally, the moment you've been waiting for! From the really cool race site, here's the official chip data: (click on "Ergebnislisten" if you're bored at work today)

First 7 km: 35:23 (8:09 per mile pace)

Second 7 km: 34:03 (7:49 per mile pace)

Third 7 km: 32:10 (7:24 per mile pace)

FINISH TIME: 1:41:37

(566 place out of 1469 finishers, 124 out of 24o in age group).

In case your wondering, the Kenyans did not run this year and an Austrian (Roman Weger) won the race with a "slow" time of 1:04:36 (slow, yeah right). But who cares about him, when you can watch me near the finish:

With all the trouble pre-race (sickness from last week and especially the weekend travel disaster), I was really happy with this time. I chopped over 5 minutes from my first Half-Marathon in October.

I hope you guys enjoyed my race post. I may post again with some final thoughts and running geek stuff, but we're off to make the most of our last 24 hours here in this really cool race city of Vienna.