So it did happen…
The day came and it was awesome.
The day was a Saturday almost 2 weeks ago.
Smooth train ride to Lake Starnberg (S-Bahn Station).
Perfect weather, no rain, almost blue sky, not too cold — still winter though.
My tiny backpack, including a water bladder (1.5l water) and some snacks.
Only tool I did allow myself to use was a compass app on my iPhone which showed me my direction home.
See pic of my running gear….
My running gear exist of Under Armour ColdGear clothes, Salomon Trail-Running-Shoes, Camel-Bak Water-Bladder and some gluten-free snacks for the run.
As I did not know the distance — only an estimate somewhere between 15k and 21k+…I asked my teammates to guess my time and the final distance. The one who comes closest had a chance to choose a charity where I wanted to donate 2 Euro for every km I ran.
Very optimistic view on my little microadventure.
Of course I did not hit the shortest trail…and I didn’t care…I wanted to enjoy nature and see how I would deal with some uncertainty while running home. Giving up is and never was an option.
Ain’t no Stairway to Heaven…
While running I tried also to trust my intuition while deciding which trail to run — left, right whatever?
One thing I’ve learned trough two occasions, yes you can trust and no you cannot trust.
Once I hit a busy road and needed to return — I trusted my guts, I was wrong.
And once I did not trusted my guts I hit a dead end within a small town trying to find an under path to cross the railway. Took me 2km to get back on some path.
Thanks to my compass app I never got lost and I did find some smaller trails than the one shown above, more like single trails where probably nobody will find you soon. I hoped for things like this, I wanted this. Uncertain, rough idea where to go. So much fun…
Once I got closer to my home I did realize that it is possible to run a half-marathon (21k)…
Excited, leg-tired, with a big grin on my face I reached my home in 2:30h for 21k.
Two team members came so close to this time and distance they decided to donate the money to Muenchner Kindertafel – Glockenbach e.V. — a donation I was happy to do.
More exciting, two team members decided to match my donation, so we donated 3 times 42 Euro — very happy.
Next adventure is a similar run but not from Lake Starnberg. I’m planning to do the run from Herrsching which is at least 20km away, means the distance will be somewhere between 20k and probably 30k.
And yes, same conditions, gear and donation.