18th – 21st of September – Oslo

Flying into Oslo it was easy to grab the express train into the center and from there it was a short walk to my hotel. The hotel was intentionally chosen as it was less than 5 minutes from the city hall in front of which the marathon would start and finish. It turned out the hotel entrance was facing the warm-up area which was an extension of the starting pens. I could barely be any closer.

Checking in I left and went to the expo – located in the starting area – and picked up my shirt and bib. Here I also met with my sister and her husband where we had a short talk and planned for meeting for dinner the evening before and after the run. She would be running the half marathon, starting 4 hours after the marathoners would be sent off.

Floating saunas. 

 

Art installation called "Eyes". I respectfully disagree. Those are not eyes.

On the Friday – the day before the run – I went for a walk in The Vigeland Park – a park filled with sculptures by Gustav Vigeland. The sculptures were weird, funny, a lot going on, but what they all had in common were fantastically expressive faces. You could spend hours looking at the individual statues, the fountain and the monolith just to be sure you got all the details. 

 

Haven't we all at some point been tempted to do this?

 

Standing in the car shop Carl realized he had misunderstood his friend 

when he said that he had gotten a new car for his two kids.

 

Having the marathon starting at 0900 the following morning I strolled out of the hotel around 0830 and walked maybe 100 meters and found my spot in the starting area. I had registered my finishing time around 3:50 and my start group covered 3:45-4:15. Standing maybe ¼ from the front I was therefore surprised seeing both the 4:00 and 4:15 pacers set up in front of me. Oh, well, I would just spend the first few km to pass them and put some distance to them.

The first groups were sent off on time and a few minutes later I also crossed the starting line. I started aiming for passing the pacers and the groups that were amassing around them, but I realized that the course was surprisingly narrow – especially in the beginning. We started west from the city hall with an early turn to the left and zigzag through a quiet residential area before coming out on Munkedamsveien followed by Drammensveien and after a bit turning right onto Halvdan Svartes Gate. From here we circled almost the entire Vigeland Park before coming back the same way and reaching Drammensveien we turned right and turned towards the water, turned east and ran along the E18 until we could turn onto Tjuvholmen, through Aker Brygge, pass the city hall and the start/finish area, past Akershus Fortress before turning up trough the central part of the city with quite a few sharp turns, reaching Pilestredet, Holbergs Gate and Sofies Gate before doing a u-turn on Martinus Lørdahls plass and taking the same way back (with the exception of circling inside Bislett Stadium) until past Pilestredet where we did a different zigzag and ending up in front of the town hall. And then doing it all once more as that was only a half marathon.

The course was generally narrow; most of the time we had half a street while we parallel with E18 stayed on the side walk and bike path. It also meant that it could be difficult at times to pass other runners, especially in the beginning when we were all crammed together. Also, the course was not flat and consisted mainly of two hills; the first from about 3km up to halfway around the Vigeland Park from 5 to 60m and down again towards the water, and then again from Akershus Fortress at 5m to when we did the u-turn before entering the stadium at 45m. Due to the layout and the visibility of the road ahead the second hill fell significantly worse than the first, even if it was smaller. But it helped knowing that you would be running down again the same way so you had something to look forward to. 

Despite the hills and narrowness I still ended up finishing in 3:55:21. That put me as 2340 out of 4356 overall (top 53,72%), 2065 out of 3635 men (top 56,81%) and 331 out of 501 M40 (top 66,07%). I’ll admit I was surprised how slow I was compared to the rest of the runners, but I assume it’s because Norwegians are outdoorsy people and therefore generally not in bad shape. And regardless, I’m still happy with my result, getting (another) sub-4 hours run.

Instead of the more common procedure of entering your race number and then getting your photos in return I had to upload a selfie. I didn’t have high hopes for the success of finding that many, but within seconds it came back with almost 200 (198 to be exact) photos, all with me in varying degree of in focus. I’ll admit: I was pretty impressed with both the response time and quality of some of the shots.

I made it just in time to see my sister off and give her a bit of heads up on the course before walking the long 200m back to my hotel and had a much needed shower. One of the last zigs (or was it one of the zags?) on the course passed by 50 meters from the hotel entrance, at the end of the street opposite of the starting area, so I managed to get out and cheer my sister along when she passed by, and then wobbled my way down to the finishing area and saw her finish, too.

Before meeting my sister and her husband for dinner I managed to meet with a friend I met on my trip to Madagascar and hadn’t seen since. We met at a wine bar (where she was already meeting with other friends) where we had a glass of wine and had a quick catch up before I continued to the Japanese and Chinese restaurant which turned out to be just around the corner. I am pretty sure my slow walk afterwards wasn’t due to the marathon but rather due to the amount of food eaten. It was a delicious izakaya-style restaurant. 

 

View of the waterfront from the Akershus Fortress.

My flight the following day wasn’t until the afternoon so I had a slow walk around town and checked out the Akershus Fortress before heading back to the airport.

Full album can be seen here.

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. 

23rd – Tromsø, post-run

I woke up and had another shower before going down to get breakfast before checking out and went on a small – slow – walk around town. I realized there was nothing much to do so I returned to the hotel where the medal and price ceremony would be held from 1300 to 1430. After 20 minutes people had held speeches and the 1., 2. and 3. place winners (both men and women) for the marathon, half marathon and 10km had been given their prices. I was starting to wonder how they could have been so wrong in estimating how long it would take, before they announced they would now give out prices for 1., 2. and 3. place winners for each class for the three runs. With up to 20 classes for each run (18-34, 35-39, 40-44, 45-49, 50-54, 55-59, 60-64, 65-69, 70-74, 75+ for men and women!), with four extra for the 10km (12-14, 15-17) it took some time. I was pretty blasted towards the end, and with the 10km run being the last getting the prices the room was more than half empty when they were done. They did try to be efficient; quickly get the 3 (or however many were present in the room) up onto the podium, give the prices, take a photo, make them leave and call the next 3. No unnecessary talking in between. I’m very happy for that – it could easily have taken most of the day if they hadn’t been so disciplined. The biggest surprise was the M75+ in the 10km group; the three fastest all did it in less than an hour which resulted in quite an applause when they came onto the stage. Or maybe the applause was to show approval of the fact that the price ceremony was finally over. Who knows.

Looking at the results list it seems as if the 10km is much more a local run compared to the marathons. Quickly skimming the results it looks like at least 80% – if not more – were Norwegians, and among the winners they absolutely dominated.

The timing was about right to grab the bus to the airport after the ceremony so I stepped out of the hotel, stepped into the bus, camped in the café lounge at the airport before departing with a layover in Oslo, looking forward to getting this trip behind me.

The view when arriving home in Copenhagen.

Full album can be found here.

22nd – 23rd – Midnight non-Sun Marathon

Being called the Midnight Sun Marathon the marathon wouldn’t be started until 2030, and the half marathon would be started 2 hours later, at 2230. The marathon’s first half would be crossing the bridge towards the Arctic Cathedral and then run south along the water before returning the same way, passing the bridge and circling around before returning across the bridge, circling around the starting area and starting on the second half of the run. The second half would go south along the coast of the island, reaching the south point and continuing north on the opposite side, reaching up along the airport, circling around and returning from where we came and finishing in the starting – now finishing – area. 

The view from the hotel room shortly before the start. Not the most promising.

At the starting line the weather was less than promising. It wasn’t raining, but it was heavily overcast. This resulted in the comment during the welcome speech “We invited you all for the midnight sun marathon, but it seems you’ll be running the midnight cloud marathon instead”. But without much further ado we were off, and we were soon across the bridge and on our way.

At around 10-15km. Still feeling optimistic.

Photo taken by the organizers.

Despite the height of the bridge it wasn’t too bad crossing it – I am assuming that part of that was due to its length making the incline less horrific than it could have been. The weather kept dry in the beginning and with the temperature around 10-12°C it could have been far worse. Returning across the bridge we started the second half of the run, at a time that I was happy with. I wasn’t going to break my PR on the distance but it didn’t look to bad, either. A couple of kilometres after the halfway point we started getting passed by the many – many – half marathon runners who had just been started and now were fresh and energetic, ready for their shorter run. It was tough puffing away and then suddenly being passed by hordes of very non-tired people. It also started raining, so that didn’t help. It wasn’t a very heavy rain, but rather a light rain but it was constant so it didn’t take long before we were soaked. And with 15km to go it got a lot worse; slowing down to get something to drink and a snack at a water station I realized I couldn’t get myself back running again. No matter how much I tried forcing myself, I had to face the realization that I had to walk. And walk I did – with the exception of a couple of km I actually managed to run slowly, I ended up walking the rest of the way. Soaked, getting constantly passed by the faster half marathoners (and marathoners, for that matter), frustrated with not being able to run and towards the end absolutely shivering from the cold I was not in a good place.

Crossing the finishline I was not in a good place.

Photo taken by the organizers.

This meant that I finished in an unimpressive time of 4:48:24, 59/72 in my class (male 35-39 – the slowest Dane in the class by 50 minutes, 13/14 of all Danes), 561/855 of men, 576/1022 in total. Fastest runner did it in 2:20:32, fastest woman did it in 2:50:50. 244 never showed up for the start, 36 didn’t finish and 1 was disqualified. The last finisher was at 7:10:44. 6 runners spent more than 6 hours.

If I hadn’t been freezing as much as I was when crossing the finish line, I would have been seething from the disappointment from my performance, but I got some hot to drink (the woman passing me the cup took a step back with an “oh my GOD!” when she saw how I lost half of the contents of the cup from shaking), grabbed my stuff from the bag storage and returned to my hotel, which fortunately was close by. I got rid of my clothes and took a much needed very hot shower which made me feel almost warm again, sat down on the bed and took a few seconds trying to get at least some of all my frustration, anger, disappointment and f#%)&(“ out of the system. Feeling slightly better – but not too much – I went to sleep, relieved that breakfast would be served until 1100 on the Sunday.

20th – 22nd of June – Tromsø, pre-run

Going to Tromsø from Copenhagen you have to have a layover in Oslo. Oslo not being the world’s largest airport it’s fairly easy finding your way around. And it does get easier when your departure gate is just across from the lounge. The food on the flight was a bit disappointing on both legs, but they had some absolutely amazing caramel & sea salt muffins. I might have had one on each leg of the flight.

The view when flying into Tromsø.

On the entire flight going north it was heavily overcast so there was nothing really to see. Nearing Tromsø the clouds started loosening up and arriving in Tromsø half an hour to midnight with the (almost) midnight sun gave some beautiful views of the landscape. Tromsø’s airport is a small one so within 10 minutes after leaving the plane I was sitting in the bus waiting for it to depart to downtown Tromsø and my hotel. The bus stopped right outside my hotel, so with no problems I checked in, got to my room, leaned back relaxing and enjoyed the view.

The view from the hotel room.

On the Friday (the 21^st) I went down to the town hall (after enjoying an excellent breakfast at the hotel and its extensive breakfast buffet) to pick up my race number. After hanging out for 10-ish minutes I re-checked the schedule and realized that they didn’t open until 1400 despite remembering it at 1200. So instead I went for a walk taking me to the south point of Tromsøya (the small island where most of Tromsø is located; Tromsø + øya – øya being the Norwegian word for island. The imagination went wild on the day they named the island). Here I found myself in front of the Tromsø Museum where there also was a map with tracks and paths on the island, perfect for walking. So I ended up walking the length of the island. App 12km, with an unintentional detour around the lake Prestvannet and a quick walk up onto Varden, the tallest point on Tromsøya of 158m. From here you could get a view of Tromsø and the opposite side of Tromsøya, and also see the connecting east and west bridges, and the Arctic Cathedral on the mainland opposite Tromsø center.

Looking over Prestvannet with mountains in the background.

The view of Tromsø from the summit of Varden.

Coming back to Tromsø I picked up my race number before returning to my hotel room. An hour relaxation later I descended to the hotel’s restaurant where the race’s pasta party was held. And the hotel definitely knew how to make pasta dishes, so that was a great success.

Friday’s weather had been ok; clouds and an occasional drizzle, but reaching Saturday it had turned overcast and it was pouring down. I did spend a few hours walking around, mainly crossing the bridge to see the Arctic Cathedral which turned out to be closed due to a wedding, but other than that I ended up just hanging out in my room waiting for the race to start. The weather was not promising, though towards the afternoon it actually managed to stop raining, though the clouds were ever-present.

The view from the cathedral.

Northern Norway

So, since having completed the Copenhagen and Tórshavn marathons, with only two weeks in between and being my first marathons, I have two more planned, the one in Berlin and New York later this year. I have been looking for another marathon some time around July so keep me going, but it seems as if there isn't much to chose among (and even if you are willing to fly and travel far there aren't many choices, and my finances are not up for that right now). August they start popping up again, but it seemed like I would have to wait until then. The only relatively easily accessible run in July is in Zermatt, Switzerland, and while that would be a nice run, it starts at 1100m and ends in 2500m. So just a bit too much for me.

And of course as an alternative I could do one in the end of June, but that would be crazy this soon after two other marathons, right?

Right??!

20th - 23rd of June

After work I'll leave for the airport and fly north into Norway to Tromsø (which is at around 69th degree). I found out that they have a marathon this weekend with a special twist: it doesn't start until 20:30, giving it the name Midnight Sun Marathon. Yup - as it's bright all 24 hours of the day they have put a marathon over midnight between Saturday and Sunday just because they can. So another of these runs (people apparently do this voluntarily?) and after a morning on Sunday I grab a flight back home. 

I think it's going to be a very nice run, it's quite beautiful there, and while it isn't quite as flat as in Copenhagen it's still a far cry from what I experienced on the Faroe Islands. We'll be crossing the main bridge in Tromsø twice which is around 50m tall, but otherwise we'll be staying between 2 and 20 meters with little variation along the way. 

6th – 7th – Crossing to Greenland

We spent two days crossing from Svalbard to Greenland, heading out the night of the 5^th and arriving at our anchoring point around 1630 the 7^th, several hours before the planned arrival. This was possible due to near excellent conditions during the crossing – despite being exposed the seas were calm and we encountered only little swell. The 7^th started with clouds/haze in the distance obscuring the sunrise and it stayed like that most of the morning when we spotted Greenland in the distance. At that point we caught up with the mist and visibility dropped to almost nothing until during lunch when we came out of it and we got our first clear view of Greenland’s east coast. We entered Copeland Fjord and anchored for the day.

Kittiwake. 

Just chugging along.

During the crossing there wasn’t much to do: standing outside hoping for any sightings (we didn’t even have birds following the ship), listening to some of the lectures held by the guides, eating, and waiting. So all in all the crossing turned out to be fairly uneventful though the lectures were quite interesting (Aurora Borealis, Greenland’s history & culture, Arctic wildlife/nature etc.).

First view of Greenland.

Arriving in Greenland we were surprised by how barren it all looked at first; it looks like a mountainous moon landscape, but also animals are low in supply around here – no whales, dolphins or seals, barely any birds and no bears (though the latter wasn’t too much of a surprise). We did get to see a few musk oxen, though they were very far away and barely much more than specs in the distance.

Musk oxen.

From now on, between 2300 and 0500, there will be a staff member on watch for northern lights and of they appear a call will be made over the PA. A short one, and only one. If there goes a call out for a sighting, and it disappears there will be no more calls if a new one appears in the sky later on.

Sunset colours.

5th – Cuddly bears

Just because you are on vacation the weather doesn’t need to be good. We have been experiencing all day with a slight mist and low-hanging clouds, but fortunately only the occasional drizzle.

I got up early in the morning (at 0300!!) to try and see if I could get anything constructive out of the sunrise. The colours were nice but there wasn’t as much as I had hoped, but despite that it did make a nice background for the birds flying around.

Sunrise.

Blue whale.

Back to bed an hour later and up with the rest of the ship at 0700 for the usual morning schedule before finding us in Hamiltonbukta where we took the zodiacs out in two groups: one landed and had a walk near an old whaling hut while the others zoomed about among the ice. After an hour or so we switched and coming out we got to see a young walrus up close resting on a small piece of ice, not doing much else other than keeping a careful eye on us. The group that started in the zodiacs had seen it circling the boats and climbing up onto the ice, showing that seeing wildlife is all about being at the right place at the right time.

Territorial fights and fighting over food was not uncommon to see among the birds.

Young walrus.

Back on the ship for lunch we relocated and in the process we spotted two more polar bears – a mother and her fairly large cub. They were quite far away and they were clearly just lying down resting and cuddling up to each other. That combined with poor visibility and the “must see a polar bear”-stress being over it seemed only a few people came out to look.

So far away.

Having relocated we landed at around 1600 for a walk; there were short, medium and long walks available and the latter would bring you up onto a summit of a nearby mountain/tall hill. It was according to our guide 300 meters and a bit and had the weather actually been nice with good visibility the view would have been spectacular.

 

We were back on the ship at 1845 just making it for dinner and skipping briefing. Dinner was followed by a trip to the bar, and at several occasions we rushed out trying to photograph the dolphins and whales that were in the water around us, all with varying success – mostly very little.

Just a hint of sun came out towards the end of the day.