Hugo Mann: Championship title as a nice bonus to the training run

Created: 08/09/2022, 09:45 am

By: Paul Hopp

Even at high speed, there was still time for a greeting in the direction of the photographing wife: Hugo Mann from TSV Penzberg ran at an average speed of 14.66 km/h.

© Karin Mann

The Bavarian 10-kilometer championship offered Hugo Mann a good opportunity for a tempo run.

And the Penzberger made a lot of steam and even won a title.

Aichach – The level at which an athlete is is also reflected in the importance he attaches to certain competitions.

For Hugo Mann (67), the 10-kilometer race in Aichach, although announced as a Bavarian championship, was not the ultimate race of the season.

The whole thing served the runner from TSV Penzberg as “a good speed unit”, as he says.

The doctor of finance is usually at home on longer distances, where he is one of the best in his class in Germany and has his sights set on the Bavarian championship in the half marathon in Ebermannstadt (September 4th) this year.

The run in Aichach was used for training purposes - and still ended with a gold medal for Mann.

In the M65 class, he easily took first place with a time of 40:55 minutes.

The Penzberger was 61 seconds ahead of the second, Lutz Schmalstieg (TG Kitzingen), who was three years his junior.

For Hugo Mann, speed was paramount

Even if he didn't completely lose sight of the placements, "the pace was the priority," says Mann.

And that's why he didn't bother about any competitors at first, but got off to a good start.

He completed the first kilometer in 3:42 minutes - "of course much too fast," says the man from Penzberg.

By the middle of the race, on a 2.5-kilometer lap that had to be completed four times near the outdoor sports facility, Mann had clocked a kilometer time of less than four minutes and "until then stayed with a fairly brisk, large group," as he reports.

At the beginning of the third lap, the long-distance specialist realized that he would not be able to keep up the extremely high speed.

As time went on, the humidity increased and did not make it easy for the athletes.

In the second part of the race, he "really faltered in terms of strength," said Mann.

But with a strong time and an average kilometer time of 4:05 minutes (equivalent to 14.7 km/h), it was enough.

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Mann would have liked to have beaten the 40-minute mark, "but due to the lack of competition practice and the resulting lack of speed it was not possible".

But since it was ultimately enough for the championship title, "I'm of course very satisfied with the race," said the Penzberger.

To date, only one M65 athlete has run the 10 kilometers faster than a man in Bavaria this year.

Ludwig Lang (born 1954) ran the distance in Ruhstorf in April in 39:39 minutes.

He is also at the top of the list of the best in the German Athletics Association.

Hugo Mann does not yet appear in the DLV list - the association points out delays in the entries on its homepage - but according to the current status he is number four in Germany.

113 women and men started in Aichach, fewer than in 2019. Tobias Ritter (LG Telis Finanz Regensburg/31:03) was the fastest among the men, and Lisa Fuchs (LG Passau/35:44) won the women’s race.