SuperHalfs pt. 2

I guess it was just a matter of time, but the SuperHalfs added a new participant in the group of runs. I was happy to complete the original 5 (Copenhagen, Prague, Valencia, Cardiff and Lisbon) in 2022 and getting the "final" medal, assuming I by doing that finished this challenge. 

But alas, that was not to be. A new run has been added to the group, increasing the number of SuperHalfs to 6. It also means, though, by running the 6th I get another fancy final medal. The old 5-run medal is rmeoved from circulation so there is only one final medal, making the original a rarity. Fancy! Also, I'm making all this sound like it's a bad thing.

4th-5th of April
Flying out to Berlin on a Friday planning on only a short extended weekend. I had actually looked into taking the train instead, but realizing how long it'd take and the number of changes needed I realized it wasn't worth my time - especially considering the price difference on top of that. I'm glad I have been fairly quick at booking hotels as the one I ended up booking at close to the start and finish area is already sold out half a year in advance.

6th of April
The Berlin half marathon has very similar - if not identical - start and finish like the marathon; we start off in Tiergarten going west past the Siegessäule and finishing coming through the Brandenburger Tor. On the way we will be passing Schloß Charlottenburg, crossing Lietzensee, passing Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche and crossing Potsdamer Platz before passing Berliner Dom before reaching Brandenburger Tor and the finish line. The runners get sent off past 10 so at least it's not an too early start.

7th of April
Flying back home, hopefully not too sore considering it's "only" a half marathon and having more runs planned in the following months.

Remembering back to the marathon in 2019 I'm expecting plenty of support along the way and a very well-executed event. It'll be a nice trip.

4th – 7th – Post race and return home

There was a diner only a few streets away from the hotel so that was the obvious choice for dinner after the run. Why walk further than absolutely necessary when your legs have a hard time cooperating?

The following two days I spent being a tourist and visited the National History Museum and the Bronx Zoo. I had visited the National History Museum before but it’s quite extensive so I wanted to visit it again and maybe check up on things I may have missed the last time. And dinosaurs are always fun looking at. 

Stegosaurus.

Tyrannosaurus Rex.

The Bronx Zoo was quite the experience; it’s basically a very large park in which they have installed multiple large cages or fenced areas where most animals have a lot of space to move around in (relative to the fact it’s a zoo). I think the only thing I had a real issue with was the collection of semi-exotic birds outside that were placed in fairly small cages. I feel like every zoo has a setup like this, regardless of where you are. It was otherwise nice to see the seemingly good conditions the animals were living in. Unfortunately this also meant you had to do a lot of walking to get around – minor unfortunate downside of an otherwise good experience. There is always the “eek” about having animals in cages for our entertainment, but if you do it this was the way to do so.

They had this wheel of fortune thing to show what you could experience as a penguin. 

For a child friendly zoo, some of these are very dark. I loved it.

 

 An excellent visual way of showing the fragile life of 100 robins. 100 eggs, 74 hatchlings, 52 fledglings and 10 adults. 

And descriptions for why those gone disappeared (cold, eaten, etc.).

I spent more than 5 hours at the zoo and when they closed at 1630 I had to rush the last parts before leaving. It was a ½ hour ride with the subway from the hotel, and leaving the zoo I took the subway south for an hour ending up in Brooklyn to check out the night views of Manhattan before crossing Brooklyn bridge with all the other tourists having the same idea as me.

 

Dinner at Katz's Delicatessen: a Reuben sandwich. Even better than it looks!

A place known by most without knowing it. "I want what she's having" should give you a hint.

The Wednesday was the last day in the city with a flight out in the late afternoon. I didn’t want to plan much so I did a late checkout from the hotel, went down to the pizza place further down the street and used my last cash on a slice and soda, before having a walk around midtown and ending up back and Penn station and returning to the airport. Got there a bit earlier than planned – but better too early than a bit late – so I hung out in the lounge seeing it slowly completely fill until my departure. Wasn’t such a bad thing getting there early after all.

The flight home went well and arrived back the next day in the early morning, had a long nap and finished off the day with a port tasting. I slept very well that night. Overall this had been a nice trip back to New York and running the marathon there again, but I do not expect to return again for that purpose. I would rather spend my money and time on different destinations, and while I didn’t reach the goal of getting a sub-4 hour run I did improve my time enough to get my average down below 4 hours. And that was good enough for me.

Full album can be seen here.

3rd of November – New York marathon

The alarm went off at 0430 and I met up with a couple of people in the hotel reception and left at 0520 to go to the pickup location where we got onto a bus that took us to the starting area. As opposed to Boston they used tourist busses and not school busses so there was plenty of leg room available for the 1½ hour drive. It wasn’t because it was far away but the last half hour we were stuck in a queue of busses letting runners off. Getting there around 0730 meant there was quite the wait until my wave started at 1020. The wait time was spent walking around in the huge starting area trying to stay warm; while the temps would be around 10-12 degrees during the run it was barely half that as long as you weren’t standing in the wind, so a lot of the time was spent trying to find a place where you’d be in the sun but out of the wind – but when you found a spot like that it was quite nice. There were free handouts of bagels, coffee, teas, water and energy drinks. The New York marathon is the one I have experienced with the most of such things and plenty of similarly large runs would be very welcome to feel inspired by this.

At 0945 the corrals were opened, 15 minutes later they were closed again and a few moments later we were all channeled from the corrals forward to the starting line. With 5 starting waves there would be an average of app. 11.000 people getting ready to run at this moment.

Crossing the Verrazzano bridge.

With the national anthem sung (of not for that and all the flags, how would we even know we were in the US?) we were finally let go at 1020. We started by leaving the first borough (Long Island) by crossing the Verrazzano bridge from where we had an excellent clear view of the south end of Manhattan. The was a slight cold breeze but barely a cloud, so conditions were nice. After the bridge we passed a 2-mile sign and I couldn’t help myself proclaiming “don’t worry – only 24 miles to go!”. The woman running next to me gave me a look that showed without a doubt that she was not nearly as enthused by that comment as I was. Tough crowd.

Crossing the bridge we entered Brooklyn and from there it was mostly just a straight line north, passing through Queens, before crossing Queensboro Bridge into Manhattan. Even if there was a unitedness in the boroughs themselves, styles, visual expressions and the level of support changed on an almost street by street basis. It was constantly changing and plenty for a runner to look at and take in, especially for someone who wasn’t local, but what they all had in common was at times overwhelming support for the runners.

With few exceptions there were water stations at every mile which meant it was easy skipping half. This seemed to be a common theme among the runners, and it also helped take some of the pressure off the stations with the numerous participants. I noticed in the beginning that the stations seemed quite short relative to how many people ran, but considering most people skipped a few here and there it made sense. Towards the end the temperatures had risen enough that getting a sip of water at every station seemed justified (and appreciated), but at least the humidity never got to the level as it had been on Friday morning. That would have been horrible.

Reaching Manhattan we were met by a wall of noise. A mile on the bridge made you get used to the silence except for the footsteps, but reaching 1st avenue you were met with countless loud spectators welcoming us to Manhattan – an almost shocking experience if you weren’t prepared for it. Running up 1st avenue all the way to the Bronx is rough; mostly mentally because you can see very far ahead and it’s hard to ignore the fact that you can see an incline almost all the way. It isn’t steep at all and you probably wouldn’t feel it if you couldn’t see it under normal circumstances, but it just keeps going forever. You just have to dig down, grab the occasional water and let the support and routine carry you forward. You crossed the 25km mark on the middle of Queensboro Bridge so there was still a bit to go from here.

Crossing the bridge back into Manhattan after the Bronx.

Reaching the Bronx we basically did a few miles large 180 degree turn before returning to Manhattan where we now were running south, reaching Central Park and running through the southern part of it, ran along the south end, coming through Columbus Circle before reentering the park and running the last 400 meters before crossing the finish line.

Running through Central Park 2km and change before the finish.

Reaching the finish line.

From there there was still a bit of walking left to get our medals, snacks and ponchos before being able to find an exit and leave the finishing area. From the finish line and to leaving was probably a few kilometers and getting to the hotel was another 2ish kilometers. I could have taken the subway but that would have required me to walk on stairs, and in this case I preferred having to walk a bit more instead. Back at the hotel I had a shower followed by collapsing onto the bed. It felt good not doing much for a few hours.

Anyways, numbers! I finished in 4:03:14. So my usual goal of sub-4 hours wasn’t met, but to be honest this wasn’t expected, either. But it does mean that I improved my time from the last time I ran New York with more than 8 minutes which was nice. This also means that the average finish time for my 6 completed marathon majors is 3:59:28 which is an extra bonus. I can’t be disappointed with that. I ended up finishing as 20141 out of 55530 overall (top 36,27%), 14304 out of 30702 men (top 46,59%) and 2147 out of 4287 in M40-44 (top 50,08%). Also 57 out of 111 Danes (top 51,35%). Overall a result I am happy with. The average man ran it in 4:17:48 and average woman in 4:48:29. The fastest was a Dutch guy who did it in 2:07:39, the slowest an American woman in 11:47:55, youngest a Danish 18 years old women and oldest an 88 years old New Zealander man.

30th October – 2nd of November – Return to the Apple

As expected the flight to New York went without a hitch. We left on time at 1300 and arrived at Newark a few minutes early around 1630. I’ve heard of less than flattering stories about the airport but within 25 minutes after leaving the plane I was standing out in the arrival hall, half an hour later I had located the airport train and arrived at the train station, and from there I grabbed a train to Manhattan Penn Station from where I walked to the hotel where I checked in at 1800. The entire process ended up being much smoother and problem free than I had mentally planned for.

On my first full day in the city I went to the runners’ expo to pick up my bib and race kit. As usual it was big and extensive. It was quick to pick up my stuff and afterwards I spent some time meandering among the numerous booths selling various running-related (and less running-related things, too). It’s always weird seeing people selling jewelry and old-fashioned watches at a runners’ expo. 

My name on the World Marathon Majors list!

From there I had a walk around in Central park before moving south and wandering somewhat aimlessly. I ended up having dinner at a small pizza place with way too much cheese on the pizza, so I decided to spend the next 1½ hours walking back to the hotel instead of taking the subway, just to feel not too bad about having that dinner. But reaching 6th avenue I was stopped in my tracks as the street being completely blocked off due to the annual Halloween parade that was about to start. I decided to stand and wait to have a watch instead of trying to find a way around – something that would be near impossible as there were no bridges across the avenue so the only other option would be to take the subway. It was 2 hours of floats with a bit too much spacing in between so there was a fair bit of waiting involved. I was glad I ended up seeing it, but it also felt like if I had missed it, it wouldn’t have been the greatest tragedy. 

The following morning at 0700 a small group from the travel group at the hotel did a morning run to the finish area in Central Park and a short detour into the park to see the Lennon memorial before returning to the hotel. A nice 7km run – but at this time of day it was already 20 degrees and filthily humid. Yesterday it reached 27ish and today seems to end up being similar. Fortunately the humidity seemed to have topped in the early morning.

The day was spent getting all the way south down to and around the 9/11 memorial, circling the south part of Manhattan before wandering back north towards the hotel along the Hudson River. Dinner was had at a local smash burger place before visiting Edge – a new panorama view at 101st floor located next to and on top of Hudson Yards. Almost in the middle between the financial district down town and south end of Central Park giving a good view of both clusters of tall buildings. The platform was outside with 3ish meter tall glass walls but with limited reflections so everything considered the conditions weren’t bad. I did get pretty stressed out by people leaning up against the glass. I know they are durable and stable, but why tempt fate like that?

The following day, Saturday, I walked along the Hudson River before reaching the north end of the High Line which I went onto and followed to its south end. A subway line now closed made into a green walking path at around 3rd floor. With the weather as it was and leaves still on the trees it was a really nice walk in spite of the crowds who had gotten the same idea. I recall doing this on my previous visits, so I’m not winning any points for originality, but this is probably the greenest walk I’ve had on the line.

I ended up at the 9/11 memorial again and this time I visited the Oculus – a modern building that’s a mall and subway station. Style-wise it doesn’t feel like New York at all; bright, white and clean – almost clinically so. Felt more like something you’d see in an oil state where you build flashy buildings. Absolutely no personality at all. 

 The Oculus.

 The Oculus from the inside. Looks fancy and all, but does fit with the surrounding buildings, I think.

 

For dinner I visited a restaurant in Little Italy and arriving at 1800 for my reservation it was complete mayhem. But waiting for a bit I got my table and getting seated things seemed to settle down a bit. Until when I was about to finish my dinner where a large party was seated next to me. I quickly finished up, paid and got out of there and returned to the hotel in an attempt to have an early night before the run tomorrow.

31st of August – Stavanger marathon

The run started at 0830 and with 5 minute walk from the hotel I set the alarm at 0700 to have plenty of time. And good I did: I woke up when the alarm went off and then apparently fell asleep again after turning off the alarm instead of snoozing it. I woke up half an hour later, so due to the good time I have given myself there wasn’t any worry about it, but there was a smidgen of panic there for a moment, realizing how bad it could have gone.

I showed up at the start around 0815 where people were getting ready. With the size of the run it all seemed very informal; a starting portal with a few fences leading into it and then just the open plaza in front of the cathedral where people were hanging out – both runners and onlookers – waiting for the start. A few minutes before the start the pacers (3:30, 3:45, 4:00 and 4:15 positioned themselves and pretty much immediately people gathered around and behind their chosen pacer. It felt surprisingly calm and orderly. I positioned myself with the 3:45 – my goal was the usual sub-4 hours despite the hilly course, but I wanted to stay ahead of the 4:00 pacers as long as possible and my plan was to have the 3:45 pacer to pull me for as long as possible, maybe 10ish km, so I could start the run with a bit of a margin to my goal.

And then – without too much fanfare – we were off on time at 0830.

And we were off!

The past days it had been overcast, chilly, windy and with regular showers and drizzles. Today the sky was clear, cool wind and temps around 13-17 degrees, so almost perfect running weather. Such a relief as I was worried the weather would have stayed lousy making the run a completely different experience.

Being in the center of Stavanger the first part of the run took us zig-zagging through residential areas (and up!) before reaching a forest path which we followed for maybe 15ish km circling the major lakes of the course (Store Stokkavatnet and Hålandsvatnet). There were definitely several ups and downs along the way, and seeing how people just seemed to race downhill was intimidating Despite being forest it was mostly open out towards the lake, resulting in some beautiful views, helped along by the weather.

To my big surprise I managed to keep up with the pacer – even easily so, it felt like. I realized at one point that in the beginning she was setting a relatively aggressive pace that would be more fitting for the 3:30 pacer, and yet I had no problems keeping up. She did though settle at a more appropriate pace at around 10ish km.

Reaching the half-way point we had returned into residential areas and the pacer for the group was replaced by a fresh runner. I was starting to fall a bit behind at this point and could see the group ahead of me, and in the few minutes it took them to swap equipment (flag and small backpack with snacks for desperate runners) the group that had followed the pacer so far seemed to completely fall apart now that they were left on their own. The new pacer caught up with the remainder of the group and things got relatively settled again, but it never got back to its former self again. It was a but funny to see, when you got a glimpse of the other pacers; people stuck to them like glue and especially during the first half there were very few people on their own so it just looked like a couple of groups of runners out and about, and not a full-fledged marathon.

Staring to fall behind of the pacer didn’t bother me too much, as this was something I had been planning on happening for quite a while. The biggest surprise was that it had taken this long before it happening, and in spite of falling behind I was still running faster (20-30sec/km) than I had expected to do at this point. So I kept pushing on and looking ahead I noticed the pace groups slowly getting smaller, slowly falling apart as runners no longer could keep up with their pacers. At least I wasn’t the only one – which shouldn’t have been surprising at all.

The conditions were excellent!

Most of the second half of the course overlapped with the half marathon course, and those runners were started 40-55 minutes after us. This meant that we wouldn’t risk getting passed by fast fresh half marathoners when we were struggling towards the end (like what happened in Tromsø), but on the other hand it was a huge morale boost when I at one point with app. 8km left started catching up with the slowest half marathoners. That felt really good!

Running along the water’s edge, and passing the 3 swords, in what turned out to be in amazing weather, was simply a great experience. Even if I was gradually getting slower it just felt good. It’s rare that I past 30km feel this optimistic despite my legs were getting predictably heavy at this point. Around the same time I realized my projected finish time would be around 3:48 and while I didn’t expect it to hold until the finish line I did let myself be carefully optimistic due to how I was feeling. The prediction actually didn’t change much to my surprise until I passed the 35km mark and even then it didn’t drop more than a few minutes. At this point I realized that unless something unexpected happened I would be finishing in less than 4 hours, and maybe, maybe I would be able to get close to my PR from Loch Ness of 3:52:52.

With 4km to go we were back in Stavanger and going along streets, and keeping half an eye on my time things were looking positive. Fighting the last few hills (not nearly as tall as those in the forests but they felt much worse) we soon arrived at the lake at the bottom of the hill where the cathedral was located. Getting to the far end all you had to do was circle the cathedral and cross the finish line on the other side – and ascend the hill at the same time. One last push. The last 300m was a rough ascent (looking back it wasn’t nearly as bad as I make it sound) before taking a sharp right turn and 100m straight across the finish line.

Realizing there was a hill to conquer before getting to the finish line.

The finish line was as informal as the starting line. Someone handed you your medal, a table with drinks, one with bananas and one with chocolate buns. There were barely any people otherwise, due to the limited number of participants there wasn’t really a crowd, and I waddled about, grabbed my stuff, left and carefully got myself back to the hotel which somehow had moved so it now took more than double the time to cover the distance than this morning. Weird.

 

The altitude not being super reliable as the start and finish was the same place.

I ended up crossing the finish line in 3:52:33, a 20 second improvement from Loch Ness – and that PR was from a course where the first half was downhill. This course was 352-375m up and down so far from flat, so while I was hoping for a sub-4 hour result I was not expecting a result like this. This was definitely a very nice surprise! I came in as 141 out of 393 overall (top 35,88%), 124 of 314 men (top 39,49%) and 15 out of 29 among M40-44 (top 51,72%). A much better result than expected and unnecessary to say I am very happy about it all! The first crossing the finish line did so at 2:33:03, the last at 5:59:40. The latter makes me believe they took the 6-hour limit seriously, whereas other runs let you finish but after the time limit they open up the streets again and you’re pretty much on your own until you reach the finish line. 

Full album can be seen here.

Nordic marathons

My runs have brought me to places far away from home, and while it has resulted in amazing trips it sometimes also makes it quite the undertaking outside of the run itself. It would be nice that I at least once in a while managed to plan a bit more convenient trip to find a run instead of having to fly half way around the world.

So a new project has seen the light of day; running marathons in the capitals of the 5 Nordic countries - Copenhagen (Denmark), Stockholm (Sweden), Oslo (Norway), Helsinki (Finland) and Reykjavik (Iceland). I am considering also including the 3 autonomous territories Faroe Islands (Denmark), Greenland (Denmark) and Åland (Finland).

The 3 latter are a bit harder to do; while the Faroe Islands have an annual half and full marathon, Åland sometimes cancel their run due to lack of interest and Greenland, well - there is an annual marathon which I would consider an extreme run which I'm not to keen on, so I may have to try and find a half marathon instead if there is one (which I believe Nuuk has annually).

Some have already been run, some have recently been planned and others are still up in the air. The schedule is currently as follows:

Copenhagen - May 2019
Stockholm - May 2025
Oslo - September 2025
Helsinki - TBA
Reykjavik - TBA

Faroe Islands - June 2019
Greenland - TBA
Åland - TBA

A small project compared to my other runs (past and likely future), but sometimes you just need to scale down and relax. Which I know is a bit of a contradiction when talking about running marathons. Oh, well. 

Gothenburg half marathon

Apparently there is a rumor going around that I enjoy running and I have no idea how it has started. I have some family in Gothenbrug and at one point he contacted me and pointed out that they have an annual half marathon, and not only that it's among the largest in the world with between 50.000 and 70.000 registered runners every year.

Not much else was necessary for me to be convinced it would be a good idea to go. I'm apparenly easy like that.

17th of May
It's a late start - the first at let go at 1300 and with the high number of runners the last group is sent off at 1600. With my estimated start time around 1:45 I'm assuming I'll in a group starting some time between 1400 and 1500, but only time will tell. The race starts near Slottskogsvallen stadium and finishes inside it. The course takes the runners across the river on Ävlsborgbron followed largely by running along the water northbound before reaching Hisingbron and crossing the river again back to the southern side. Here we will pass Linnéplatsen before skirting along Slottsskogen before finishing in the stadium. With the (potential) number of runners I expect the support to be great for the entire run, but never having run in Sweden before I don't know how they are cheering-wise so that'll be interesting to see.

So another run, but at least I have found one that doesn't require a lot of travel coordination and long travel times.