This was Robert Zischg's farewell run: he will go to Chicago for some years. It was great to have him around, twice winner of the VICRunners Cup, good competition for our top runners. All the best, Robert !
Proposed by Mario and Gregor, today's 5km run was a premiere (1 lap + 1 mile), and it certainly will find its place in the VICRunners schedule.
For today's mile run, timers were recruited in Donaupark 5 minutes before the race, and they did a great job - thank you to Olena, Ferdinand and Robert ! During the race the friendly garden ladies watched our equipment bag and jackets. Very close finish in the race: the first four runners within 4 seconds.
Obviously Peter is back in shape after his severe illness. First participation of Upali since he has been working in his home country Sri Lanka to help his people after the tsunami catastrophe, and first participation of Carla - welcome ! Thank you to our timers Joyce and Alain who worked together very well. Alain's pictures will be on our homepage soon.
In contrast to last week nobody needed woolen cap or gloves today. We had 20 degrees, perfect for the mile.
Terrain was icy - one of the timers had a little accident already on the way to Donaupark; the x-ray did not reveal anything serious, however. Because of the surface conditions we modified the course a little bit. No PRs, but Bernd in his first mile made it to the Top 100.
There was not enough snow to justify running the wintercourse and the temperature was not too bad at -4 C.
A close finish by the leading group of three and another duel starring Alain and Graeme.
Comeback of the race: Annie TAIT finished 10k again after a break of exactly 5 years (in 1999 she had been second in our VICRunners Cup).
Thanks to our timers Anabel & Christian who will have cold feet for the rest of the day.
The strong wind was an additional handicap for the participants.
Newcomers Andreas and Denis (welcome !) of course had no handicap and therefore are ranked at the bottom of the list.
Excellent job by our timing specialists Uschi and Norbert who had a hard time when 15 runners arrived at the finish line within 90 seconds.