Haspa Marathon Hamburg
24. April 2022, von David W. Drew, und Alfred Traue
Der Hamburger Haspa-Marathon gehört zu den größten Frühjahrsmarathons von Deutschland. Jeder vom Verein bereits Teilgenommene war sehr angetan vom Lauf durch die Elbmetropole. Es werden immer die schönsten Quartiere der Stadt, die breiten Boulevards mit ihrer einzigartigen hanseatisch maritimen Kulisse entlang des Hafens, der Elbe und Alster in die Strecke integriert.
Unser Vereinskollege David Drew, unser Londoner Bub, trat am Sonntag 24. April zu diesem Lauf an. Er übermittelte einen tollen Bericht, diesmal nicht auf deutsch, sondern auf englisch. Da die Vereinsmitglieder alle zu den gebildeten Läuferinnen und Läufern gehören, dürfte es dabei keine Probleme geben. Falls einmal doch, dann bitte www.leo.org anwenden!
David berichtete
My Last Marathon as a 40-something year old – I turned 50 three days later.
So … Hamburg … Well I got a call from a wonderful friend Andy, from Cape Town – who was coming back to Germany for a little while to help his dad move house and it just so happened to coincide with the Hamburg “follow the blue line“ marathon. Andy was hooked and knew the best thing to do was to message his idiot friend David in Frankfurt who never says no to a sports challenge. I did not let him down, and in the diary it went.
Energie wird gebraucht!
I agreed to enter in early December and immediately set about a programme of serious overeating, irresponsible drinking and very little exercise through the Christmas holidays and into January! It took quite a lot of unsubtle questioning from Corina about when I was planning to start my training for me to eventually get going. Typical Corina of course … “goody two shoes“ was already well into her Boston (same week) training programme. But eventually I gave in to the pressure and kicked off my training. It was not easy; dark mornings and dark evenings through the beginning of the year make the marathon schedule feel like quite a burden compared to spring and summer training. It was also a little solitary as Martin´s knee was not behaving, and our Boston bound athlete, was too quick to run with the slow old man heading for Hamburg.
Geschafft – zwei glückliche Läufer
Anyhow – I eventually scraped through the bare minimum of training, extremely grateful for the long weekend runs with BELC which really make a difference when woven into a 20k or 30k weekend schedule. Armed with my FFP2 mask (nothing else goes in Hamburg), I set off, a little sleepy and jetlagged (I landed from Asia 24 hours before) to meet up with Andy. The weather was perfect – the route flat and off we went … I was quite surprised at 10 km – it felts pretty easy, and I strolled through well under an hour, then at 21, I was taking no pain and just under two hours … Could I be on for a sub 4 hour marathon …? It started to feel like it, although my target time at the start had been just 04:30. Then at 25 km things just slowed up a little, no great collapse, but my speed just started decreasing and the run through the drink stops became a little more walk through … By the end, I had lost half an hour to the creeping laziness and my second half marathon was 30 minutes slower than the first and I finished up just about where I thought I would – at 04:31:17.
Nach dem Marathon ist vor dem Marathon …
It is a lovely marathon, very flat, nice vibe and good support – not too big at about 7,500 runners, but still enough to feel like a material event. And of course, after the race … it is a great city to celebrate in and Andy and I spend the night and into the early hours of the next day catching up and enjoying the great city. The next day … my legs felt pretty good, but my head was very sore!
Anmerkung der Redaktion
→ Start auf der Karolinenstraße an der Hamburg-Messe Richtung Reeperbahn – auf der sündigen Meile Hamburgs, vorbei an den Tanzenden Türmen sind bereits die ersten Kilometer ein echtes Highlight. Reeperbahn, dort wo die Läufer normalerweise das Anfangstempo umherblickend deutlich reduzieren, hatte David seinen besten km-Schnitt! Er wollte sich nicht ablenken lassen.
→ Nach dem Klosterstern werden auf dem Harvestehuder Weg parallel zum Westufer der Alster die letzten Reserven mobilisiert. Dort am Alster Westufer stehen die schönsten Parkbänke von Hamburg und laden zum Verweilen ein. Was zu einem leicht deutlicheren Abfall von Davids Laufgeschwindigkeit führte.
Fazit: Glückwunsch David zu dieser Leistung. Trotz der Anstrengungen auf allen Fotos ein Lächeln auf den Lippen.