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 had a ticket for the train back to London at around noon but with a relatively early check-out time at the hotel I had a bit of time to kill before heading home. There wasn’t much to do and weather wasn’t really “walk-the-town”-weather though still dry. It resulted in some slightly bored trotting around before getting on the train and getting back to London and Heathrow airport. From there a break in the lounge before flying home – the end of a generally very uneventful trip home.

Cardiff was a nice old city (town?) with a very interesting and charming castle in the center. I was honestly surprised by how much I was into the tour there and would not have minded to be on a more extended tour to get to see more of it or being told more details of the rooms. But Cardiff is also part of the UK which means that having sun on the race day was near-miraculous. The weather most of the time was just moist and grey. But in spite of all that it was a very nice visit. And I completed the 4th of my 5 Superhalf runs.

Full album can be seen here.

2nd – Cardiff race day

Being so close to the starting area I was in no rush in the morning – I set the alarm to 08:00 so I could faff about at my leisure before leaving. I woke halfway up 20-30 minutes before the alarm went off and all I registered was what sounded like torrential rain coming down outside. What a day for a run! I nodded off again, and when the alarm did go off the rain had mostly quieted down and not long after completely ended.

Half an hour before start I left the hotel and joined the flow of people going to the starting area where I quickly found the section where my wave was located (which was pretty easy as it turned out it was at the end of the street where my hotel was located). I positioned myself in the middle of the group and shortly before start the 1:45 pacer moved up towards the front – and then he left and ended up in the rear of the 1:30-1:45 group with the 1:30 pacer in the front. As it wasn’t possible to move around in the now gathered crowd of runners I decided to run without a pacer – and if the 1:45’er passed me I’d hook up onto him and have him pull me home.

Wheelchair racers where sent off at 09:50 followed by elite and sub-1:30’ers at 10:00, and as they were leaving the starting area we were moved up towards the starting line and at 10:04 we were let go.

While waiting at the starting line it was getting obvious that the risk of rain was rapidly decreasing as the cloud cover was lightening and the sun was coming out. While waiting we were in the shade but somewhere between 2 and 3 km we took a 90 degree turn putting us straight towards the sun which meant that with all the water on the ground from the morning’s rain and the rapid increase in temperature the humidity skyrocketed. Not quite the start I had been hoping for. Throughout the race I overheard multiple locals comment on the weather noting that the current situation was far from what they had expected.

Around the half-way point it became a common sight to see people hand out either Haribo or Bassett winegums or Turkish delights. That was great! It was also around that time where runners finally had been spread out enough that it wasn’t uncomfortably congested anymore. It wasn’t because there were more runners than at similar runs, the streets were just quite narrow for the entire course so while they were quite nice it was a bit impractical with this many people gathered all at once. 

We circled south from the castle past and across Cardiff Bay over the Cardiff Bay bridge, which turned out to be significantly flatter than I had expected. From there we went through the center of the city and further north before doing a (roughly) 180 turn and returned to the center and the finish line behind the castle. While there weren’t spectators everywhere, where they were they were very supportive. 

Crossing the finish line you were handed your medal, (very pink) finisher t-shirt and various drinks and fruits. I managed to find my way through the finishing area and a short walk later I had returned to my hotel. Extra bonus: the receptionist noted that I was the first runner staying at the hotel to finish. Yay? 

I crossed the finish line in 1:45:11, right above my goal, but without a pacer I was pretty happy with the result. Also considering the Chicago marathon next weekend I tried not to push myself (too) hard. I came in as 1718 out of 12.783 overall (top 13,44%), 1528 out of 7236 men (top 21,12%) and 265 out of 956 M40 (top 27,72%). So relatively speaking it was a very nice result which I am pretty happy about. You had to get to M75+ or F60 to find a group winner who was slower than me!

Returning to the hotel I had a much needed shower and relaxed the rest of the day. I left again around 17:00 and walked around for maybe an hour before I found a place for dinner – a burger place named Fat Hippo seemed right up my alley.

Returning to the hotel – again – before 20:00 I indeed felt like a fat hippo and did absolutely nothing productive the rest of the evening.

29th of September – 1st of October – Cardiff pre-run

The easiest path to Cardiff from home is flying out to Heathrow, take the train to Paddington and from there the train to Cardiff. I had planned with an hour from arriving in London to catch my connection to Paddington so it was absolutely wonderful to find out the flight was delayed for almost an hour.

The scheduled 2-hour flight ended up being 1½ hours, and rushing through the airport (why do you always arrive at the one of the furthest away gates when you are in a hurry??) a couple of dense and slowpokes in the automatic passport gates did their best to delay me, but I still made it to the platform with 5 minutes to spare. Considering the size of the airport I was pretty impressed with that.

The train to Paddington went swimmingly, and apart from maybe 10 minutes’ delay the connecting 2 hour train to Cardiff was a satisfyingly relaxing adventure. From Cardiff central it was a short 10-minute walk to the hotel where I checked in at around 2130.

An hour later after settling into one of the smallest hotel rooms I have ever been in I went for a short walk to take in the surrounding area in the dark. Turns out I’m less than 10 minutes from Cardiff Castle which is where the run will start and finish so at least that will be easy on race day.

River Taff with Principality Stadium on the left.

City Hall.

The following morning I left the hotel and went to the castle where I got myself a ticket for a tour of the castle which for an hour brought us around in the main building where we were presented to some of the rooms. The were all gorgeous and beautifully decorated – and lots of symbolism and references. The children’s room had the walls lined with painted characters from numerous fairytales. The men’s drinking/smoking room has decorated with zodiac signs relative to the seasons, the people the weekdays are named after and the cycle of the sun and the moon and “their” gods/personifications – the theme of the room being time. Another room’s theme was John the Elder (the guy that wrote the last book in the bible). Greek, Latin, English, Runes, hieroglyphs, Hebrew and other were all represented in one form or another. The 3rd Marquess of Bute (who was at the time considered the richest man in Britain if not the world) who ordered the remodeling of the castle under the architect William Burges knew 23 languages and wanted to be able to enjoy the bible as originally as possible. We also came through a roof garden, a small dining room (where you’d call on the staff by pressing a button disguised as a carved squirrel’s nut – a nut in its mouth, that is), the large social hall all castles have, a room where you went to talk after dinner which was also where the tour ended. This is called the drawing room – not because you draw in the room, but because you withdraw yourself from the dinner and in here afterwards. 

Leaving the building you passed through the library which still held a lot of old books in various languages. Coming outside it had started drizzling on and off which didn’t prevent me taking a walk on and inside the battlements (the insides had been offered up and used as bomb shelters during WW2) and the central keep. The latter was basically now an uncovered circular wall which previously had been filled with small buildings on the inside lining the wall. I finished off in the war museum which presented a historical walkthrough of Welch and British military.

About to leave I realized it was pouring down so I ended up staying for lunch. Having finished lunch and it was still pouring down I decided I couldn’t be bothered to wait for it to stop so I left and had a walk down to Mermaid Quay to have a look around. Walking around I realized that my insistence on not being holed away in a hotel room when travelling was being trumped by the weather, so mid-afternoon I returned to my room where I stayed until dinner (where it fortunately had stopped raining).

The ventilation in the hotel room is almost non-existent. There is a vent in the bathroom but it is small and can barely cope after having a shower. I managed to figure out how to turn on the radiator and used that to try and dry my clothes, though it’s making the room both hot and humid. I guess it’s still better than having to wear soaked clothes when going out.

The expo for the run was basically just for international runners as GB runners apparently had their kit sent to them instead. So I was told to pick up my kit at the expo on Saturday at 0800-1000 or 1300-1800. I never made it out the door to be there in the morning (what a surprise!) so I relaxed and had a walk in Bute Park all the way to Haily Park. At that point it had gone past noon and with no breakfast or lunch yet I thought it would be time to return and find something to eat.

A pair of racoons on the Animal Wall at the castle.

I got all the way back to the City Hall and the expo – there had been a lot of talk and writing about gathering at the expo and seeing al the sponsors and booths but the only thing that was open when I arrived was a tent where I collected my kit without an issue. The t-shirt is a finisher shirt so I won’t be getting that until I cross the finish line. The problem with that is that if you finish late (there is a 4½ hour limit) there is a risk that your size is gone if too many grabbed a size they hadn’t been registered for. Apparently it happened at the Royal Parks HM when I ran it. I got my stuff, got something to eat and being mid-afternoon at that point I retuned to the hotel to relax. I went out in the evening for dinner close by, but apart from that I spent the rest of the day being fantastically unproductive.

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.