The lure must have been great. When Gesa Krause took the first steps in the obstacle course over 3000 meters, she could well have had an angel on her left shoulder and a devil on her right shoulder. The angel would have whispered to Krause not to overdo the tempo; the devil against it: "Run faster, otherwise you are very far away from the podium."
When a race starts as fast as that on Monday night at the World Athletics Championships in Qatar, then you can ever get into a predicament. The future gold winner Beatrice Chepkoech from Kenya had cleared the field shortly after the start and opened behind a fast hunt for the medal places. And Krause was left with only the question: to go along or wait and see?
MUSTAFA ABUMUNES / AFP
Gesa Krause felt bad at the beginning but her bronze plan worked
Krause later said that she felt "really bad" in this race phase. But the 27-year-old also said, "Sometimes you can not exaggerate too soon." So Krause resisted the fast start speed, got himself into the end of the chase group, and she lurked until the final round on a slump in their rivals. The plan worked out, the result being a bronze medal for her and thus the first German medal in these title fights, improvement of her previous German record by just under four seconds to 9:03:30 minutes, and she is now behind Russia's former world record holder Gulnara Galkina (8:58:81 minutes) the second fastest European in history.
180 training kilometers a week, nine months altitude training camp
A historic achievement, Krause called it "willpower." The fact that their racetrack was also a tactically brilliant show almost went under. But the longer you listened to Krause, the clearer it became about her will power: It was not just this evening, not just this one medal race with the strong final spurt.
It is her development that reads off in numbers, for years only she herself is able to crack her German record. Her career also tells about the constant optimization of her race: how to approach an obstacle? Krause likes to keep her distance from her rivals, lurking here too, and still often makes her good. "To keep an eye on the obstacle," she explains the rather hesitant start, and such a sentence also tells how much she likes the role of the huntress.
The bronze race in the video https://t.co/2GfMaPAlRK
- ZDF Sport (@ ZDFsport) September 30, 2019But most of all, behind her "willpower" is the enormous effort she puts into joining the world class. Since October 2018 Krause does not want to have rested a single day in training, she emphasized after the race. She runs between 160 and 180 training kilometers a week, which is an ambitious brand even for long-distance runners. At this point, the handwriting of her trainer Wolfgang Heinig becomes visible, who once worked as a national coach for the German marathon runners.
Besides: no alcohol, no sweets. "I've always done the right thing for my body over the past few months," said Krause. This program also includes up to nine months of altitude training camp each year, much like the last one in South Africa, far away from friends and family. The training at altitude to boost the oxygen transport in the body, even the top competition from Kenya is based on it.
Fall in London in 2017 made her a tragic figure - and notoriety
And this training seems to pay off at Krause. Coach Heinig said after the race on ZDF: "That was not the work of a year, but of ten years." The former youth athlete of the year 2011 has been shaping German running for almost a decade, and the 68-year-old Heinig has his share in it. The former Sprinter was later honored by Krause as a "genius in terms of training", she told of a four-year plan that Heinig had made for her a long time ago. Whether this foresee an Olympic medal in Tokyo 2020? "It's definitely a dream that I want to fulfill," said Krause. Her best ever place at the Olympics was sixth in Rio 2016.
Krause will probably have become known only a year later: her unfortunate crash at the 2017 World Cup in London, but especially how militantly she ran out of the race, will be remembered by many. At the time, former DLV President Clemens Prokop called Krause "a role model in sports". For a long time now, she has also had an appeal beyond the sport, with Instagram now following 115,000 fans. Krause is one of those faces, which does the DLV good, but the association has for years a result crisis in running at world level.
Krause wants to start the Olympic preparation in three weeks. The running shoes are likely to put them back in the coming days. Krause said she will stay in Doha for four more days and after the performances in the air-conditioned stadium, she now wants to "run again in the heat" at 42 degrees Celsius and high humidity. Keywords: will power.