16th – 18th of May – Gothenburg

My cousin located in Gothenburg grabbed hold of me at one point and asked me if I would want to participate in this year’s Göteborgvarvet – the annual Gothenburg half marathon. He noted that if I signed up so would he, but he didn’t even have to say that to convince me and not long after I had signed up, and not long after he had, too.

Gothenburg half marathon is apparently the largest annual half marathon in the world with 50.000+ people signing up every year. A fair number of people who get sent off over a period of 3 hours from 1300, so in spite of the many people it never feels as congested as one would imagine.

Getting to Gothenburg is easy; grab the train in Copenhagen and then get off app. 3,5 hours later. A short walk later I arrived at my cousin’s, a bit before he finished work so I spent some time in their garden enjoying the weather and quiet. He had been nice enough to also pick up my bib up at the expo so I basically just had to show up. Shortly after he finished work and we had caught up his wife and kids showed up, and dinner was had. I was set to start at 1314 and my cousin a few minutes later, and because of this there was no rush to get up and out on run day; slow morning and catching the bus to the park where the start was. 

The run felt like a huge city-wide party with activities for kids, plenty of food stalls and generally huge number of people around the start and finish area. The weather was very nice but temps in the 20s so a bit too warm to my liking – but it helped getting people out and about and adding to the great mood around the run. Also the 9 water stations helped a fair bit on fighting dehydration. Starting in Slottskagsvallen – a large park – we ran the first few km in some pleasant greenery. Coming through some residential area before passing the tallest point on the course – the bridge Älvsborgsbron. From there we followed along the river north/east bound, most of the time close to the water where we were running along the docks, sometimes without fences so you had to keep to your line and hope everyone else were doing the same. At least with all the onlookers around you could hope being blocked or caught if you accidentally got pushed the wrong direction…

The last few km was through a nice green forested area. 

Coming through a bit of industrial-looking area we crossed the river once again over the Hisingsbron, getting through a few turns before coming up towards Götaplatsen where we turned around, turned down Vasagatan and from there more or less straight to the finish area, the last few 100m parallel with the first couple of 100m. This meant that when reaching the finish line you would still see waves be sent off from the starting area. 

The last few meters circling the arena before crossing the finish line.

I managed to finish at 1:43:34 – satisfying considering I had run the Copenhagen marathon the weekend before (a small impulsive buy of a spot 3 days in advance). I came in as 6043 out of 46646 overall (top 12,96%), 5407 out of 28566 men (top 18,93 %) and 620 out of 2927 M40 (top 21,18%). My cousin was a few minutes slower but he had been talking about the longest he had run was maybe 10km and that was a few months ago. So happy for him finishing with such a result, but part of me was a bit annoyed that he wasn’t that much slower considering the difference in our training (but when meeting him maybe 15-20 minutes after him finishing he still looked more tired than I had felt at any time, so yay?). 

Returning to the busses we ended up in a bit of chaos of tired runners trying to locate their bus home – our bus turned out to be fairly late but when it finally arrived and a bunch of runners piled in. Non-runners were probably very happy about being trapped in a bus filled with sweaty runners. Arriving home we had a much-needed shower before celebrating the run, having dinner and having a relaxing evening. The following day I got a lift to the station, got on my train, found my seat and had a uneventful ride home.

Full album can be seen here.