Last Sunday Peter and I took part in the Zürich Silvesterlauf – it  seems a little early as Silvester in Switzerland is actually the New Year, but the run always takes place on the second Sunday in December. That’s me above in the turquoise – and for once in a race I don’t look as if I’m about to collapse!

The Silvesterlauf is a city run – four loops through the centre of Zürich, totaling 8.6km. The route runs along the river Limmat, then crosses one of the ancient bridges, climbs up by the police station and then weaves its way through the cobbled streets of the old town, reaching Bahnhofstrasse, the main shopping street before turning left towards the Swiss National Bank.  The streets aren’t very wide in many places and often at the start there are queues to get through a particularly narrow section. Spectators line the whole route and cheer and swing football rattles as the runners rush by.

This year around 17,500 people took part in the various races. We went with friends and had signed up for one of the slower – and later races – because we wanted to run in the dark and enjoy the illuminations and Christmas decorations.

It was a fun event – we weren’t very fast as a result – but it was a lovely experience, not too cold, lots of running Santa’s to be seen and loads of spectators. So if you’re a runner and are ever in Zürich in December, check it out – it’s certainly unlike any other race I’ve ever done! Next year I hope I’ll have trained a bit more and be a little quicker!

See you there?

Helen

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 13th, 2011 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Places, Running. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.