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.

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.

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. 

Second update on the Superhalfs

With already one update to the Superhalfs' dates I was hoping that that would be it, but as we all know by now there is no sign of the pandemic slowing down and giving us a break. This means that all the planned runs have now moved their dates for next year. The runs are therefore now planned for the following dates next year:

Prague - March the 27th

Lisbon - May the 9th

Copenhagen - September the 19th

Cardiff - October the 3rd

Valencia - October the 24th

Here's to hoping that the dates won't change anymore, but I guess that just by writing that I've already jinxed it. On the plus side I am still able to do all of them in the first year the Superhalfs in going on but that is the only positive I can see from all this.

Superhalfs pandemic update

As mentioned previously I have decided to participate in the Superhalfs - 5 half marathons in Lisbon, Prague, Copenhagen, Cardiff and Valencia, two in the spring and three in the fall. You can complete them over 3 years from the first run to get get into the Superhalfs hall of fame. And originally my plan was to power through all 5 in one calendar year.

And then the Corona pandemic happened.

It pretty much ruined all my plans for the first half of 2020 (after coming home from Antarctica). The organizers were forced to cancel or move the runs, and therefore my schedule has changed quite significantly. The schedule now looks like this:

Lisbon (September 6^th)

Prague (March 27^th 2021)

Copenhagen (2021)

Cardiff (October 4^th)

Valencia (October 25^th)

Lisbon got moved to the 6th of September, and a week later Prague was moved to the same day. A lot of criticism was voiced on the Prague HM facebook page, but apparently the organizers couldn't find another day that would fit everybody's schedule (city, organizers, etc.). So my Prague run will be postponed for next year. And I have had to postpone my run in Copenhagen until next year, too, as the Boston marathon got moved to the Monday the day after, and that run takes priority by a wide margin.

So here's to hoping that no more delays will happen, but I guess nothing is certain these days.

The Superhalfs

From 2020 a group of European half marathons have gotten together to create what they call “an adventure”. It is basically 5 different half marathons spread out throughout the year, two in the early spring and three in the fall. The list is as follows:

Lisbon (March 22^nd)

Prague (March 28^th)

Copenhagen (September 13^th)

Cardiff (October 4^th)

Valencia (October 25^th)

You have 36 months to complete all 5 races to be listed in the Superhalfs Hall of Fame, but I looked at it and concluded that I wanted to challenge myself so I decided to do them in within one calendar year. This has therefore resulted in me booking four extended weekends throughout the year (the Copenhagen marathon will only require a short train ride back and forth). They will all be Friday-Sunday with the exception of Prague which will be Thursday-Sunday as the run is on the Saturday instead of Sunday. Also, Prague will be a repeat visit but despite it was just in 2018 I went there last time I don’t really mind as I really enjoyed walking around in the old city (and the food was good and cheap).

I managed to get hotels close to the start/finish lines which fortunately were also quite close to the centre of the cities. Lisbon was an exception, though, as the start is across a bridge from the city centre. And from there the course mostly stays away from the main parts of the city centre. I tried to find a place close to a train station (the race instructions are to take the train to the starting area) and still close to the centre so I’m hoping I’ve read the map correctly and it won’t be a logistical nightmare when I get there to get to and from the run.