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Friday the 13th! Everybody knows that these days of the year might wait with surprises. This time it was our time. We left Flagstaff early in the morning and everything went just fine on the way to Skyharbor airport in Phoenix. No traffic jams :-) But at the airport the trouble started. The plane from Mexico City had such a big delay arriving in Phoenix that the departure time for our plane to Hermosillo was so much delayed that we wouldn´t have got our connection to Chihuahua in the afternoon. There was no chance to reach this flight in time. To make the story short: We called our travel agency in Norway (it was already 8.30pm in Norway!!!). We bought new tickets and they put us on a flight to Dallas, with a connection the same evening to Chihuahua. Gooood. That´s what we thought! But this flight got delayed from Phoenix to Dallas and we arrived too late to catch the flight to Chihuahua. What a mess! We did not give up! They send us to Monterrey/Mexico and we stayed at an airport hotel Friday night. This morning we took the first flight from Monterrey to Chihuahua and arrived five hours before my race. We made it :-) I did not know what to expect but I knew that I had trained very good and that I was in good shape.
The race started very slow. Most of the European girls were in the leadpack in the beginning. Then Ines Henriques (POR) and me took the lead. We walked together for a long time and for every lap less and less girls could follow. I looked for my chance to decide this race. I felt good and I pushed at around 16km. I got some meters lead right away and managed to keep this until the finish line. I won my first race in my last season, 28 seconds ahead of Ines and two minutes and seven seconds ahead of Elisa Rigaudo (ITA). I am very happy and quite pleased with this start into the season. It feels good that my new life situation with the combination of work at ADECCO and being an athlete works out.
Also my brother Erik did great and became fourth in a very strong field. Good job Erik! Tomorrow morning we will already leave Chihuahua. We will go back to Flagstaff to do one more week altitude training.

Results from Chihuahua:

Womens race:
1.- Kjersti Plaetzer, Noruega, 1:33:34 horas
2.- Inés Henriques, Portugal, 1:34:02
3.- Elisa Rigaudo, Italia, 1:35:41
4.- Beatriz Pascual, España, 1:36:04
5.- Susana Feitor, Portugal, 1:36:52
6.- Elena Ginko, Bielorusia, 1:38:47
7.- Johana Ordoñez, Ecuador, 1:38:53
8.- Claudia Stef, Rumania, 1:39:04
9.- Tatiana Korotkova, Rusia, 1:39:22
10.- Tatiana Gudkova, Rusia, 1:40:01

Mens race:
1.- Eder Sanchez, Mexico, 1:22:21 horas
2.- Luis Fernando Lopez,COL, 1:23:06
3.- Jared Tallent, AUS, 1:23:44
4.- Erik Tysse, NOR, 1:23:56
5.- Adam Rutter, AUS, 1:24:25
6.- David Mejia, MEX, 1:24:30
7.- Luke Adams, AUS, 1:24:53
8.- Bernardo Segura, MEX, 1:25:00
9.- Adrian Herrera, MEX, 1:25:10
10.- Robert Heffernan, IRL, 1:25:32

See also:

IAAF Challenge Chihuahua/Mexico

EAA: Plätzer and Nymark off to a great start in th

IAAF: Sánchez and Plätzer take repeat victories in

 

2009-03-15