I am super excited to share a guest post with you from my friend (and my husband’s cousin) Holly, a badass mother runner of four from Germany! She recently competed in a 70km ultra in the Bavarian Forest, and she graciously agreed to write a post about if for me and the Nathan Performance Speed 2 Hydration Belt. Read on for an inspiring mother runner race report!
Hi everyone! My name is Holly and I am one of the biggest fans of Jessica’s blog! Ok, I may be a little biased since she is married to my favorite cousin…but still.
In August I was staying with Jessica and her family for the weekend while I ran the Falmouth Road Race and while there I was telling her about my problems with the hydration belt I was using and never having enough water with me. I run long distances and don’t care too much for back-packs, so this is not an easy problem to solve. Anyway, Jessica gave me a Nathan Speed 2 Hydration Belt to try out which had two 10oz bottles in it. I used it for about a month while training for an ultramarathon, which I just ran this past weekend. The race was the Landkreislauf Regensburg in Germany on a course which meandered 70km through the Bavarian Forest while climbing over 3,000 feet of elevation. Whew!
They say ultramarathons are 90% mental and the other 10% is also mental! I don’t know about that, because without the basic training I wouldn’t even dare show up at the starting line of one, but at some point your body is certainly going to try to convince your brain to walk or sit down, and it’s then when you need those mental distractions. But all things said and done, if you’ve prepared yourself with the proper training then the biggest challenge on race day is hydration and nutrition!
Running for hours on end requires a significant amount of calories and at least a half liter of water per hour. If aid stations can’t provide it then you need to fend for yourself, either through drop-bags, friends, or carrying everything yourself! I actually wore the Nathan Speed 2 Hydration Belt during my race and my husband met me every hour or so for a fill-her-up…literally!
I LOVE the Nathan Speed 2 Hydration Belt! It holds two 10oz bottles which are usually enough to get me through a run of about 1 ½ hours in duration. The bottles are held in molded plastic and allow you to take them out and replace them with only one hand…not like some other belts that have stretchy-elastic-bands to hold the bottles and require you to open the bands with one hand and shimmy the bottle in with the other!
The belt also has two pockets: a very small one in the front big enough for my lip balm and a few coins, as well as a larger one in the back which looks small but stretches out enough to hold my cell phone, a granola bar and a gel (and sometimes a couple of pages of maps) ☺. The size I have is an S/P and, with a clothing size of 4, it fits me perfectly. I like to wear the belt around my hips and it stays in place really well, although the bottles have popped out a couple of times while hopping along rugged trails.
As for the race, I finished in 7 hours and 17 minutes, taking first place in the women’s division and ninth overall! For the complete story of my ultramarathon check out www.hollyzimmermann.com.
My name is Holly Zimmermann and I am a “40-Something Mother Runner.” My husband is German and we have lived in Bavaria (southern Germany) now for 15 years! I have four kids aged 6 to 13 and; although I have always run, I didn’t compete in races until after the birth of my fourth. Now I run all distances from 5k’s to ultras, mountain races, as well as triathlons and bikes races. I’m also an enthusiastic vegan!
*30 Something Mother Runner received a Nathan Speed 2 Hydration Belt for review. I had Holly test the hydration belt during her ultra–all opinions and writing are 100% her own (P.S. I agree with them!). 🙂
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