After a good first cycle the Liestaler Stadtlauf was set to be my last real race before my two main races in October: 10k Southend London October 7th where I am aiming to dip under the 32 minutes barrier and Swiss-City Half Marathon Lucerne 28th of October where I am hoping for a good ranking.

This time again, the route was changed due to finished roadwork in Liestal, so the time was not comparable to last year (approximately 400m less). In contrary to my last two participation in 2015 and 2017, where it always has been a very close race until the finish, this time everything was set from the beginning. I quite hoped that Jannis Schönleber would compete again, he is in about the same range as me. Unfortunately, this was not the case, instead of him, Ahmed El Jaddar was there, quite too fast for me. So from the, start there was already a huge gap between him in front and me, whereas in the back I was never in danger getting caught by Manuel Hügli to whom I lost back in 2015 in a 100-meter sprint. I felt lonely and was now more afraid of the steep climb in the forest which we had to do twice. Since the route was never completely flat, it is a race which can only be paced by feeling, so the watch was useless. Shortly after we reached the forest it started to get dark. "Why so fast?" I thought until I realized a huge thunderstorm is emerging. A few minutes later heavy rain felt down on me and I felt like in a different world. On one hand I liked the cooling effect of it, on the other hand my running gear started to soak up that water and got really heavy. Luckily no heavy wind was involved and after about fifteen minutes it stopped. Now it was more the deep puddles on the ground which were a danger to slip and also slowing down my speed. Finally, I could finish second after 41:03min about one and a half minute back of Ahmed and three and a half minute in front of Manuel. Should be about the same speed as last year. Not bad, considering the difficult weather conditions and the fact that this time I ran the whole race on my own. 

To summarize, another good second place and ready to get in some more quality work for the upcoming 10k.