It had been two years since our last Oktoberfestlauf bout as Joelle was pregnant and Pemulis was somehow injured one year ago (instead of going to the race we took a 3-hour boat ride on the Starnbergersee which actually sounds like something worth writing about and I have a vague recollection of perhaps having done just that; hmm... if only there were a way to check something like that). So I had something to prove.
On Saturday morning, while most of Munich was still laying in bed nursing their Oktoberfest hangover, I was up at 6:30 in the A.M. making peanut butter and jam toast -- the official Breakfast of Champions (co-official anyways; the other one is white sausage and beer). Heinrich (new German pseudonym for Helga's baby brother -- thanks for the tip loyal reader!) doesn't sleep and so Joelle doesn't really sleep either and Helga has been kind of sick so they all stayed in bed and I, Pemulis of Aragon (or something), made the trip north to Oberscheleißheim on my own.
The clouds were sparse but hung low in the sky and there was a terse [sic] wind blowing out of the south-west. I prepared myself mentally for the upcoming race gazing out of the train's dust-covered window while listening to my new favourite pop star LDR. The S1 pulled into Obschleißheim Central around 8:45 in the morning and I began the long and lonesome walk to the Olympic Regatta -- the site of the fabled race.
I filled out a form and paid my registration. In an ambiguous field with the word "Altersklasse" that roughly translates as "age group" (I think -- and the fact that I only think that's the translation may have a lot to do with what happened later) I wrote my age: 38. I went off to the change area to attach my chip, put on my race number, change my clothes, etc. After some light warm-up exercises and a few sips of water, I made my way to the starting gates. A few more brief moments to settle the nerves and then: BANG! We were off...
I exploded out of the gate, accelerating past many of my sworn enemies, and rather foolishly completed the inaugural kilometre in about 3 minutes and 45 seconds. It was rather exhilarating those first few hundred metres as I found myself in the leading pack of the race! 5, maybe 6 of us, hurtling (not literally as that's a different kind of race) forward at break-neck speed with hundreds of lesser mortals in our wake feebly attempting to catch us. Here I was, after all these years of effort, having pushed myself to mould my body and athletic abilities into one of the greats! Surrounded by the fastest of the fast! The future was ours! Of course, I very obviously faded away about six seconds afterwards, swallowed up by the angry pack of has- and never-beens, but I'd never felt so free and alive as I did last Saturday during those sixty seconds (give or take) at the front [exaggerated for effect].
The next kilometre was not quite as fun. I clearly went WAY too fast for my (current) abilities over the first few minutes and was already suffering in a truly debilitating manner. Not a good thing only 10% into the race. But I gritted my teeth and just kept trucking and completed the second kilometre in 4:07. Total time so far: 7:53, and therefore still holding 7 seconds of buffer time in my epic quest towards a sub-40 minute 10 k. The third kilometre was even harder than the first two, but I had somehow found the power and determination within to have sped up a bit: 4:02. That means 5 seconds of buffer and only 70% of the race to go. 4th km? 4:04. Holding 1 second below that elusive 40 minute 10k barrier. 5th km? 4:09. Official time for 5 km: 20:07. Actually, that's not so bad in my humble opinion. But I was kind of spent at this point so I clearly wasn't going to run the next 5k any faster (or anywhere close to) the first 5.
After grabbing a sip of water I head out for lap 2. And what happened next was rather abysmal. The sixth kilometre required a whopping 4:27 and the one after that was even worse: 4:36. I only needed 2000 m of distance to wipe out an entire minute above my goal time and thus ended my quest for everlasting glory. Nevertheless, I refused to go gentle into that good night; that nightmare of a seventh kilometre would prove to be the peak of my failures (when failures are limited to the race track and divided up evenly into 1000 m chunks) and each of the three remaining would palpably improve over the one that came before it: 4:16, then 4:13, and then, finally for the tenth kilometre, a respectable (but still not good enough) 4:04, for a final total time of 41:53.
One day, I shall prevail. But not today. In any case, a 4:10 average pace for 10 km is not the worst result in the entire world and so after consuming a steak sandwich and 3 or 4 flavoured Erdinger Weißbiers I took a casual stroll over to the posted results, or Ergebnisse as we call it in Deutschland. I found my name somewhere near the top of the list (but by no means at the very top) and traced a finger from my name over to the "AK" (age category) column. First place! How about that? The column right next to AK, however, is that fabled German word we discussed above: Altersklasse. Mine should have said M35, but instead? It said M80.
Yes, by writing "38" as the answer to the question "age category", they understood that I had been born way back in the year 1938. A great year, of course. The Niagara Bridge over the Falls in New York collapsed due to an ice jam. There was the annexation of Austria. The Vatican recognized Franco's government in Spain. Italy won the World Cup. Ok, so it was a terrible year. And further, I most definitely was not born during it. I alerted the proper authorities and they made the required corrections. Placed safely back in my true age category, however, my place dropped from the mighty first down to the not-so-mighty seventh. Ah well. Maybe one day.
Half-way point. Me looking pained (top) and me looking like I'm about to fall over (bottom). Only the top picture represents reality.
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