In stead of running one of the typical "last day of the year" races for several reasons I decided to such race a few days earlier. After quite a few days of really really bad weather in Catalunya we were very lucky to have being able to run without rain. I arrived early the Olympic Rowing Canal on the edge of Castelldefels near where my son goes to the UPC University. I picked up my bib number and slowly started my warmup. I had some small aches of the previous races and also my right foot had a stitching pain from time to time, buy luckily it seemed that I could run ok and the strides during the warm up felt ok, though not great, probably because of lack of speed training. Around 8h45 I handed over my backpack that the organization would carry to the finish area, since this race is not circular and eventhough it was rather good weather it was quite cold and putting on some extra layers when finished seemed like a good idea.
At 9am we where counted down and after a first few hundred meters of doing a slalom to advance slower runners I finally settled into a more constant pace. The first kilometer, because of all the passes I made went by very quickly in 4m11 (time on watch) which is very fast for me nowadays. The second kilometer I still could maintain that pace with 4m15 and then I slowed down a little bit to at least being able to breath and not overdo it and struggle to much to the end. The first kilometers we ran around the "Canal Olimpic", which is very flat and straight and after a bit more than a full round we turned right to go in direction of the center of Castelldefels and run up to the castle there. My pace dropped slightly to around 4m30 which I could hold without too much effort until we start the zig-zag climb to the castle which I could maintain in just under 6m pace. I finished with a decent sprint in 28m06. Very happy with how it went and also enjoyed the race a lot, maybe I will repeat in the coming years.
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