March 9th, 2013 – SallandTrail Nijverdal (25km)

Guess who’s back?? After 6 months (heavily overtrained), stamina is finally comming back. Sunshine again in runnersworld. No sunshine today at the Sallandtrail, but that was just a minor setback, the SallandTrail is a great event and I felt good today.
It was only my 2nd trailrun in Holland, the first one being the 2012 edition of this race. Today a slightly different route, but all the good things stayed the same.
I started with some reserves today, not knowing what speed to run. I wanted to race under a certain heart rate, but unfortunately my heart rate monitor didn’t work perfectly today. No problem. Just enjoying the race. During the race I remembered why these trail runs are ideal as training. It’s so much more beautiful then asphalt roads, and there are climbs, mud (today, because of the rain), it was slippery (still no trail-run shoes, on top of my shopping-list) it’s a complete training.
The comming months I will try to improve my pb’s on the shorter distances (5 and 10km), and use trail runs as training when I don’t have a match.

But today the SallandTrail. Two distances, 25 and 50km. Just as last year I did the 25km. A beautiful course through the woods of Salland with some small climbs. In the end: we live in Holland, no mountains, but after several of these small climbs you also feel your legs, I can assure you 🙂 The 50km ran the same course and after 25km they had a really terrific part through the moorlands of Salland. Something I’m planning to do next year. But you have to be quick; only 75 people a day are allowed on this part of the trail, so that’s the maximum number of competitors on the longest distance. This year it was sold out in 10 minutes or so…

The etos between the runners was really good. Now and then you had the time for a little chat with someone running with you. At about 15km there was the refreshment point. Unique! All kinds of food and drinks were available. Including our famous Dutch pie, the “Limburgse vlaai”. I didn’t stop too long, but the place and the volunteers deserved some time.
After filling the carbohydrates we could run full speed again.
The first 15 kilometer went smoothly. I wanted to do the last 3-4 kilometers in a faster speed, but I couldn’t control myself, so I started a little earlier… The last 10 kilometers I went almost full-speed. New this year was the “Kuul”. A small sandy valley with a steep descend and the correspondending ascend. Heaviest part of the race for me, the ascend. And of course there were a lot of photographers on top of the ascend. Nice 😉

To my big surprise I was running an average speed of 4:46 a kilometer. My endtime was 1:57:00 (my Garmin stated 24,5km), a 32nd place.
The organisation was spotless again, enthousiastic volunteers and race director Bertus van Elburg have put the Salland Trail definitely on the map as one of the most populair trail runs in Holland. If you haven’t run here before, I recommend to try it once!

Let the photo’s speak for themselves!