Thursday, April 30, 2009

Race versus journey

My Trans Europe experience is very much a journey, not a race. I know that if I pushed for good times and obsessed over my classification (which I think is currently somewhere around 40th), then I would end up injured and abandoning. So my "strategy" is paying off thus far. But what's happening in the race up front?

One great feature of the race is that the first 12 finishers from the previous stage get to start 1 hour later at 7am. Because of that, we get to see them scream past us sometime between 3 and 4 hours after our start. It is amazing to see how consistently hard they can work.

The leaders are currently Rainer and René, both from Germany. Today - for the first time - I actually saw them working together, rather than trying to run each other into the ground. They are running 3hr30 marathon pace...the whole way! Japanese and Scandinavians make up the next few places.

On the women's side, Hiroko for Japan is dominant, but Ria from Holland is having a great race too. Japanese and Germans make up the other leader places.

These are amazing, humble people I am privileged to have gotten to know. I hope they are enjoying the journey as much as me.

4 comments:

Alma said...

Great strategy....it's a journey...

Sadie J said...

Nice post. Thanks for taking all of us with you on your journey. We're here with you every step of the way.

Unknown said...

I love your journey!

Anonymous said...

Great perspective. Thanks for sharing the experience.
JimG