To end the year right, we signed ourselves up for Hannover’s Silvester-Börsenlauf — a 5.8 km race around the Maschsee* on New Year’s Eve day.  Since it’s such a strange distance and because I hadn’t specifically trained for the race, the point was purely to have fun (we didn’t even bother with timing chips).

It was a bitterly cold day, but everyone was in high spirits and I was definitely feeling the adrenalin!  I ran with one of mein Schatz‘s BFF and a friend of his.  Neither wanted to be particularly challenged, so we agreed on a 9:30 min/mile pace (aka 6:00 min/km), which was slightly faster than I was planning to run, but still manageable.

As we weaved through the crowds, we hit our first mile ahead of target at around 9:22.  I was feeling good, but a bit winded, so instead of chatting, I just listened to the guys’ conversation.  Since I was the only one of us with a watch, I guess I was responsible for us picking up the pace in the second mile, which we hit at about a 9:08 pace.  My body promptly started protesting and I got the worst side stitch ever in my history of running.  I didn’t have to stop, but we did slow down the pace significantly and did the third mile in about 9:45.  I don’t know the exact pace for the last 0.6 miles, but we crossed the finish line around 33:34, with an average overall pace of 9:26.

We were pretty spot-on in terms of our finish goal time, but if I had kept the pace constant instead of getting carried away with the excitement, I probably would have enjoyed the race a bit more.  Ah well, it’s been awhile since I’ve done a race just for fun — I’m out of fun-race-practice!  Sekt and Krapfen (also known as Berliner, but apparently not in Hannover) were the finish line goodies, and I devoured mine in seconds.

All in all, a good race, even if I did crash and burn towards the end.  It was a fun way to spend the last few hours of 2012.  I’m definitely hooked now on the concept of a New Year’s Eve/Day race, so this won’t be my last!

* An artificial lake in the center of Hannover, built in 1936 as one of first Nazi-led public works projects.

How was your New Year’s?  Did you do anything unusual to close out 2012/ring in 2013?