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.
