SuperHalfs conclusion

Back in the good ol' days, in 2019, 5 European half marathons - Prague, Lisbon, Copenhagen, Cardiff and Valencia - announced they got together to give runners an opportunity to earn a fancy medal if you completed all 5 within 36 months from 2020 onward. Off course such a thing was right up my alley and I quickly signed up for all of them. And then that happened, so they were all cancelled and/or postponed. 

And postponed a bit more.

Until towards the end of 2021 where the first started again; Copenhagen and Valencia. So I participated in those though after the Copenhagen run I realized that they wouldn't start counting until the beginning of 2022. They argued they wanted a fresh start and fresh year, and while some of the community complained about this - the communication about this decision hadn't been clear before the Copenhagen run - they held onto that decision and I would have to also run them in 2022 despite completing them in 2021. The horror!

So getting through 2022 I have finally run and completed all 5 Superhalfs.

Prague (2nd of April); 1:44:41
Lisbon (8th of May); 1:46:35
Copenhagen (18th of September); 1:40:05 (PR)
Cardiff (2nd of October); 1:45:11
Valencia (23rd of October); 1:48:08

My goal on the half marathon distance is 1:45 which I didn't achieve for 3 of the runs. Fortunately, due to my fast time in Copenhagen I still managed to stay below 1:45 on average, more exactly 1:44:56. This meant that in Valencia I had 18 seconds to spare. A bit close to comfort, but I am happy I managed and it is now over and done with.

The SuperHalfs medal next to the Valencia HM medal.

3rd – Return home

I didn’t have much of a plan on my last (half) day in town so I ended up sleeping in, having breakfast and checking out at the latest having a bit of a walk around town. The weather had turned into the best since I had arrived – warming and few clouds. Of course that would happen on the day I’m returning home.

Grabbed the subway and bus to the airport where I went through security without an issue and found a seat overlooking the apron and seeing the air traffic move by. It’s quite amazing seeing the size difference of the planes when they pass by each other.

The flights – and layover – went without a hitch and I was soon back home, after a train connection that probably was the worst timed connection ever. Oh, well. Home safe and sound, having completed the first of 5 SuperHalfs half marathons, and the first of 7 “I should have done this back in 2020”-runs.

Full album can be found here.

2nd – Prague half marathon

Waking up at 0800 I checked the forecast and it had now been updated to be -1°C feeling like -7°C at start – so no miraculous warming during the last 8 hours. Getting dressed I went outside for a for a quick jog around the block to get a feel for the weather. At least it wasn’t snowing despite the forecast last night. Moving around it felt like almost too much clothing, but turning a corner and realizing I had been out of the wind until then the amount of layers definitely weren’t overkill. I ended up wearing a thin baselayer, a thicker, slightly wind-breaking, layer/jacket-thing and the official running t-shirt on top. Sweating like a pig when inside but feeling much more appropriate outside.

I returned to my room, grabbed my jacket and wrapped up before leaving for the starting area. Around 45 minutes before start I entered the closed off area and wandered a bit around and tried killing time until the start. There was surprisingly little to see or do, and no one handing out drinks before the run. But to my surprised they probably had the highest portapotty-to-participant ratio I have ever seen. Even close to start the queues were very short. So happy to see that.

I handed in my jacket and it didn’t take long for me to start feeling the cold creeping in. At one point I just wished for the speaker to announce “screw it, guys, it’s cold, we’ll be starting in 5 minutes!”. It helped when one of the streets between the waiting area and the starting corridor turned into an improvised jogging ring where people circled at a gentle pace. Also, the street being shielded from the wind it was a nice way of (re-)gaining a bit of warmth.

But finally the clock struck 10 and we were off. The weather was nice even if it was cold, there was no snow (or rain) despite of the forecast, and it only really felt cold when you got hit by the wind (though that could also be due to the multiple layers). There was a part towards the beginning where we were running in a straight line south and I ended up taking off my beanie because I was starting to get hot and worry I might have put on too much, but as soon as we reached the 180 degree turn-around point and starting running back north I quickly had to put it back on again realizing that we had had the wind in our backs. It was windy throughout the entire run but at least there were passages where we weren’t affected by it. And there were definitely passages where we were.

The course was up and down on along the river on both sides so we didn’t get a chance of running through the old part of town. That was probably a good thing because there aren’t many wide streets around there, and even if “only” app. 11.500 people had signed up for the run and it wasn’t crowded after the first few km I could easily see a bit of traffic jams if we were led through those parts. There would also have been many more cobblestones if we had been led through the old part, and any chance of avoiding cobblestone during a run is a good thing. Running on both sides of the river required us to cross it a total of 6 times – fortunately they were all relatively flat so the amount of ups and downs were limited.

I crossed the finish line at 1:44:41, within my goal of 1:45, but only just. Walking through the finish area I was given heated energy drink (at this temperature it was worth its weight in gold!), a banana, energy drinks and obviously a medal before I wandered off to grab my jacket and return to the hotel. After a long hot shower I rested a bit before returning out to grab a chimney cake with ice cream (how people can eat those without making a mess is beyond me!) and a humongous hotdog. Returning to the hotel I rested before going back out (again) for dinner where I ended up in a place where I had a pork knuckle. It had a massive bone so it ended up not being quite as intimidating as it initially looked, and the taste was fantastic. And the meat was enormously tender – a well-made osso buco is more coherent than this was! 

Chimney cakes being baked.

30th of March – 1st of April – Prague, pre-race

The flight to Prague went almost without a hitch. “Almost”, as the first leg of the flight was app. 20 minutes delayed which meant I didn’t have much time to visit the lounge in Brussels – the horror! One hour after touching down on the runway in Prague at 1600 I was checking in at the hotel so all in all the trip ended up being a smooth experience.

Not a very inspiring view, but at least there won't be any traffic noise.

I realized that my 4 meals throughout the day (lounges and flights) had been completely filled up so in spite of nearing dinner time I decided to skip it and just, after a short break in the hotel room, have a walk around, figuring out where the start and finish lines would be and just taking in the nightly views. The planned short walk ended up being 3 hours and resulted in a handful of photos of a dark and wet Prague.

With the run being on Saturday I would be spending Thursday and Friday on relaxing and doing as little as possible. Having been here back in 2018 I had already visited the castle and the impressive cathedral there. I was tempted to return but with the grey overcast weather I doubted that the stained glass could live up to expectations so I decided to skip it. After picking up my race number and t-shirt at the runner’s expo I decided instead to head north across the river, ultimately ending up at the zoo. 

Tiger of the variant "cuddly".

I ended up wandering the zoo for 3-4 hours until closing and felt I hadn’t had enough time – even if I skipped the entire savannah section. The zoo was spread out over quite a large area which also meant they had room for quite a lot of species. They also had quite the selection of cats; two different fishing cats, leopard cats, Malayan and Sumatran tigers, lions, leopards and a clouded leopard. Especially the latter I was excited to see, but both times I passed by it was sleeping in its box with only the head visible. Apparently they also had cheetahs but the area where they belonged were closed so it’s anyone’s guess where they were being kept. They also had juguarundi cats (from Central and South America), some I had never seen before. There were a lot of aviaries, and in general it seemed like the animals had plenty of space considering it was a zoo – though the aviaries did seem slightly small-ish, especially for the birds of prey. In spite of the weather it was quite the enjoyable experience, and probably due to a combination of the weather and being outside the normal tourist season, according to the counter just inside the entrance less than 1050 people had visited throughout the day. For reference; the zoo is app. 55ha and has near 6000 animals (5 times the size and almost double that of Copenhagen’s zoo, respectively). 

Juguarundi.

At closing I left and walked the 5-6km back to the city center to have dinner and a walk around before returning to the hotel for the night. Apparently the AC at the hotel is set to winter mode which means it can only heat and not cool. For someone who normally sleeps with an open window all year round this is a bit of a disappointment, but not really something I can do anything about. Oh, well, things could have been worse. 

I think the map missed the point of its existence. 

Friday ended up being an intentionally relative short day as I wanted to rest before the run tomorrow. I did a bit of directionless wandering which ultimately ended me up west of the river and at the Petrin lookout tower. While the weather could have been nicer, walking to the top still gave a nice view of the castle which was near by and the city in general. Returning to the hotel I rested (again) for a few hours before going out for dinner and coming back for the rest of the night.

View of the citadel.

View of the city,

The weather hasn’t been quite as I had been looking forward to. I was happy when leaving home as we had had a few weeks with very nice weather and it was finally starting to feel like spring, and this week would have the weather souring again dropping temps back down to near freezing and no more clear skies. So flying out I felt that the timing was perfect – unfortunately it seemed like Prague has gotten the exact same idea. These days it has been breezy, 5°C at most and the occasional drizzle. Friday evening it was 2°C and feeling like -3°C, and tomorrow at the start of the race at 1000 we are facing 0°C feeling like -6°C, with a bit of precipitation mixed in. Yay.

New and old.

For someone who has never visited the hotel before the floor layout is so weird. The floors consist of a big square and two arcs lining one side of the square. There were two hallways going to the two outer sides of the arcs, and then one hallway going down the center to both arcs’ inner sides. And that middle section only had a door to the square hallway in one end. It was so confusing in the beginning but it definitely helped when seeing a floor plan. And I didn’t have to worry about street noise despite only being on third floor as my view is pretty much roofs and walls. And as my door is at the end of the hallway there aren’t much heard from other guests either, which is pretty nice.

Update on the Superhalfs

Just like with the Marathon Majors the Superhalfs have been affected by the current pandemic. What I had planned on running and completing in 2020 when the Superhalfs were introduced has now been postponed to 2022. So despite my annoyance to start this means that I still will be able to complete the Superhalfs series in the first year (completely ignoring you have 36 months from the first to the last run to get the Superhalfs medal). So as of now the schedule looks like the following:

Prague – April

Lisbon – May

Copenhagen – September

Cardiff – October

Valencia – October

Here's crossing my fingers that things will go smoothly going forward. Some of next year's dates have not been published yet so those are still pending. In any case, the fall looks like it'll be busy which will be a nice change of pace considering the recent lack of traveling.