Half marathon in Salzburg

Salzburg. A city of love at first sight. Mountains, greenery, old buildings, culture, charm, water and so on. I booked this trip a month ago and have been looking forward since then. When I reallocated to Zurich it was a great chance to explore nearby places during weekends and Salzburg is 4,5 hours away with a direct train so my booking finger pressed the buy button. The half marathon day it was 22 degrees outside and sunny when I went to the start at 08:00. One hour later then fun should begin.

Preparations

My race preparations were non existing for aiming for a good time. This was a pure sightseeing and running combo weekend trip so I had no pressure result wise from myself. Salzburg was filled with sights and the day before the race I ended up hiking the urban mountain Unterberg. It was defiantly a highlight of my trip but three hours of hiking and additional a full day of walking made my legs wanna scream for a slow day. But it was half marathon day. Half marathon sightseeing day. I am though not good at focus on sightseeing when I have a bib on.

Race story

If I could have bought a pair of new legs this morning I would done so. Stupid as I am I started to shake out my poor legs by doing the first kilometers in 4:30 min/k pace. Don’t ask me why. I wasn’t even going for a PR. I calmed down a bit and decided to do every K sun 5 pace. Can tell it was a struggle even the first 7K to do so. It was hot. Luckily it was a flat course and very, very beautiful. Kilometer after kilometer consisted of an alley before we came to the castle of Hellenbrun which I visited the day before.

There were a fair share of people out watching in the summer heath. Thankfully many locals supported with water because that was the one and only thing the race organization could do better. Provide more water stations. I really felt bad for the full marathon runners this day. They were heroes all of them. The race was rather big so roads were closed during the day.

The scenic views persisted to exist during the race. I revised my goal again. Sub 1:45. There was no free ride this day. I had to fight for every kilometer. Not to many people were passing me and I realized fellow runners were also fighting the heath. The last kilometers felt extremely long. Big crowds were cheering and although I just wanted to walk I kept on running.

I wanted to give the Salzburg half marathon story a happy ending so I gave all I had and finished sub 1:45. Actually 1:44:40. When I checked the results I realized it was pretty good. 29th female runner in the 21K race out of a bit more than 700 finishers. Next race is a 5K with my new colleagues at Swiss and then I have Berne 10K coming up in June. Until next time I have some homey to do. Train my arms. I can really feel I have not been to a gym regularly the last two months. If you look for a well organized half marathon and want to visit a beautiful city Salzburg is a great choice.

Do you guys have any planned runs?

/ Pernilla that had a successful race weekend in Salzburg