Running my City: A challenge to get back to running

The challenge

I was very excited with my running plans this year. Then sickness hit. Out of the last ten weeks I could only run consistently on one and I had to spend a good amount of that time without much movement and certainly without exercise.

This week I was ready to go back. A good coincidence is that finally the temperatures are rising and the sun is coming back in the part of Germany where I live, Ulm.

As I had to cancel my first racing plans of the year, which mainly was going for a PR in a road marathon, I needed a challenge. I’ve never been too much of a backyard challenge kind of guy, but I got creative and I am kind of excited with this one. I decided to run my city in the next five weeks in four different routes: From bottom to top, from East to West, from South to North and finally all around it.

I checked some maps and came out with some routes and it seems fun. The first one is under 10k with 200m of elevation gain. The next two are around 20-25k. So I’ll do these firest three in my first three weeks back to training. Then I’ll train for two weeks more for the last route: Running all around Ulm. This one means running as close as I can to the limits of the city. That summed up to a route of 64k passing through forests, farms and city landscapes. Even if I have already ran 100k and 150k ultras, it will be tough after only 5 weeks of training starting from my current shape, but being a bit nervous about a challenge is fun and exciting, and I get to do some of my favorite things exploring on maps and exploring while being on my feet.

The first week

This week I started by running 10k on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I was surprised that I didn’t feel as bad as I expected, I didn’t run fast but it was quite smooth. I went out for walks the other weekdays. I also did 20mins of of strength work, I am still with a few niggles from Pleurisy (one of the sicknesses that I had) so that’s what I could manage.

On the weekend I went for a trail run with a local runner that contacted me trough an expats Whatsapp group chat. She wanted to get to know about trail running but didn’t want to just go out to the forest alone with no experience. I really liked doing that and potentially helping more people getting into the sport and just enjoying the nature that we have so close to our neighbourhoods.

Finally on Sunday I tackled the first run of the challenge. The lowest point that I could find in Ulm is the banks of the Danube river, which is actually also a limit of the city, so I started there. I ran through the center of the city, then through the neighbourhoods of Weststadt and Söflingen. All that first part of about 5k was pretty flat. Then I entered the forest where I had 150m out of the total 200m of elevation gain that the route had. Finally I reached the television tower which sits on the highest point of Ulm, completing the route with 9km and 200m of elevation gain. At that point, in the middle of the forest, the best route to go back home was running 4.5k more.

All in all a very good week with a great Sunday run, meeting new people, exploring new trails and new parts of the city and slowly getting back in shape, all through running.

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