Race date: 14.8.2010
Official Finishing Time: 3:40:08 chip time, 3:40:47 gun time
Official Position: 515/6467
Race number: 2792

Last Saturday I ran my first marathon, the Helsinki City Marathon. My confidence was quite low as my training in July was inadequate due to travelling and brief illness. In addition the weather in Helsinki was rather hot & humid, apparently the temperature was around 27 degrees when I finished just before 7pm. Despite all this, I decided to set off at a rather optimistic pace (4:44min/km), aiming for a finishing time near 3:20h or so. It went a bit wrong. I managed to keep the pace up to the half marathon point, which I reached in 1:41:05 chip time, but by 27km my pace had dropped dramatically and I started to struggle. A key factor here was the fact that I didn’t get much liquid in during the first half — I tried to have a drink while running, but the cups you get from the drink stations aren’t really ideal for drinking & running. I really needed to get more liquid in, so I started to walk past the drinks stations, which cost me a lot of time. It worked though: I started to feel a little better by 37km and actually managed a half decent pace for a while. In fact, after the marathon my legs felt better than after many of my long runs, so they certainly could’ve taken a faster pace. All in all the race was a bit of a learning experience: you just shouldn’t set off too fast on a marathon.

At 7km, when everything was still ok... Thanks to my mum for the photo.

The organisation of the race in general was acceptable, but there were some major and several minor problems. The storage facilities were a joke, the start was insanely crowded (no starting pens) and people were jumping over the fences to even get there, and the finishing area had inadequate resources and was badly organised. I didn’t suffer from these things very severely, expect perhaps the overcrowded start, but it all left a bit of a bad taste about the event. Fortunately I had some great support along the way, with friends and relatives at strategic points and a couple of surprises as well. A special thanks to everyone who showed up!

I had been under the impression that the Helsinki marathon is a fairly flat and easy course, although I knew it had a few hills; the total height gain was 364m. As it turned out, it was not quite as easy as I had thought. The course passes some long bridges, which are not ideal for running, and there are a few rather steep hills as well, I think I had to walk at least one of them. For some reason the route is designed in such a way that it takes in a section of a cobbled street in the centre of Helsinki — I hope I don’t have to run on that type of surface any time soon! Other than that the route is quite nice and scenic, although there is some repetition.

Here is some more data, my official chip times and positions at different stages of the race:

10km 47:36 / 444
HM 1:41:05 / 380
30km 2:28:20 / 417

My best position was thus around the half marathon point and at 30km I was still at 3:30h pace, but I lost another 100 places in the last 12km! Disappointing, especially given that I’ve ran 38km in 3:08h in training, and I felt that I could’ve easily done the marathon in 3:30h then. Well, I could’ve probably done it now as well had I started at a slower pace. Still, I probably took everything out of the machine as my average heart rate was 170bpm and peaked at 190bpm. It’s interesting to note that for that 38km in training (in cool weather) my average heart rate was only 157bpm! So the weather really had an effect on the toughness of this race. Anyway, there’s plenty more data on my Garmin Connect page if anyone is interested. The Garmin recorded the course as 42.61km and the time as 3:40:45 (I started it with the gun).

So, that’s it, been there and ran that. Some people say that they have a lack of motivation after a marathon; running seems pointless after that target has been reached. Well, I think I want to shave off quite a bit from that marathon time before I feel that I’ve actually even done it properly, so plenty of goals to reach yet! My next proper race is the Middlesbrough 10k on September 5, and after that I’m running the Great North Run in Newcastle on September 19.