It has been 25 marathons or 8 months since my last venture overseas for a marathon. This time it was a return to Scandinavia and for the first time to Finland’s capital, Helsinki in the land of a thousand lakes, a new country and city for me and Mrs C to explore. With a 2 hour 45 minute flight and Helsinki time being 2 hours ahead of us in the UK, it meant the travel wasn’t too taxing. Helsinki is more than worth a city break with its, pleasant waterfront and harbour, hosting a vibrant souvenir and food market. We enjoyed our lunch times here, with salmon soup and reindeer meat balls, to give you a flavour as to what was on offer. The city centre was immediately next to the harbour and was very delightful, with its cobbled streets, lovely old stone buildings, many department stores and regular trams. That said you were still never far away from one of many small green spaces dotted around the centre with well looked after with colourful, flower beds, fountains and statues. We even enjoyed a morning at the botanical gardens behind the fascinating old central train station, all within a short walk from the city centre.
The BMW Helsinki marathon was held on the Saturday with a fairly early morning start time of 8:30am which I didn’t really mind as it allows most of the runners to be back for lunchtime. The course for the half marathon was one loop. For the full marathon we completed the same, followed by 2 smaller identical loops. It wasn’t the most glamorous of courses and I could see the 2 small loops were designed to keep the runners away from disrupting traffic and the flow of the city, which I can appreciate. A lot of the course was along the coast so was quite pleasant and there was a well staged finish on the front.
My marathon finishing times have been relatively poor for me this year. I am putting it down to lack of quality training, including effort sessions but in my defence knee pain hasn’t really allowed me to do the amount I would like. Also, I appreciate I am still running lots of marathons and getting older, now 54. Recently, I have done some better training, with the hope it will pay off. This year I have only managed 1 sub 4 hour marathon out of the last 24 and longed to get back to finishing more regularly with a time that starts with a 3. I set off with a pace of about 8:45 minute miles with the plan to get to halfway in about 1:50 to 1:55 to give me breathing space to get under 4 hours without killing myself in the second half. This went perfectly to plan and I got through half way in 1:53. The second half obviously felt harder and I slowed ever so slightly but still felt strong which was very pleasing. I ran under the impressive finishing gentry with a chip time of 3:52:30. Overall, my run was a very enjoyable with no hitches, hopefully I can enjoy a few more like this over the coming months.
I am so proud of Mrs C, who did a great job completing the Half marathon, especially after she had twisted her ankle only a few weeks ago and lost out on lots of training. Helsinki is certainly a city worth a visit and even though this marathon doesn’t take in the city’s centre, it is a well organised and executed marathon event and I don’t regret coming. One thought I did have was that with all the cobbles streets in the city centre, it might have been for the better that we didn’t run through them. I have also found out there is another Helsinki marathon in May, starting and finishing at the Olympic stadium, this means I might have to make another visit!
As an aside, I found out there is a 15km coastal path that runs around the city and is worth a run around if you have the energy and time. Should you do this, take a map with you because it has lots of turns and it is easy to go wrong but still worth persevering and I found it very interesting and fun.
