Race Date: 30.7.2011
Official Finishing Time: 1:25:55,0 chip time
Official Overall Position: 6/141 (finishers), which puts me in the fastest 4.23%
Race number: 59

I’ve been putting off this report a bit because I hoped to find some photos of the event, but nothing has emerged so far, so it’s about time to post it. This half marathon in Heinola, Finland was arranged only for the second time, and I didn’t know much about it. The timing was good however and since the field wasn’t particularly strong last year and the race is very small, I thought I’d have a chance to place quite well. I was looking to get below 85min and beat my PB of 1:25:15. As you can see, I wasn’t far off, but it just didn’t happen: I couldn’t speed up on the last 5k even though I knew that a PB would still be on. I had used all my energy on the first half and I was in fact running by myself for the whole second half — a typical problem of a small race. I did run a few kilometres with a Spanish guy in his fifties, who ended up finishing just a minute and a half behind me, but the fifth guy was too much ahead of me, almost three minutes. The course itself was fairly flat and quite fast, although most of it was on gravel rather than proper road and there was even a brief bit which would have to be considered a trail. Other than that there were a few bridge crossings and a couple of tiny hills, but all in all it’s a pretty fast course, so that’s no excuse really. The day was nice and sunny but not too hot (although it could’ve been cooler).

The organization of the race seemed ok for the most part, but the course itself had a few problems as there were some artifical sharp turns and the finishing straight was stupidly along the course so that you had to pass it three times. There was one 10k loop which was done twice and then an additional 1,1k loop that was not particularly well situated, but fortunately I had explored the route beforehand on my warmup. At the finish I was quite disappointed to discover that there was no food, no sports drinks, not even water! We got a single bottle of water with the registration pack, but you’d expect a bit more for 25 euros… Aid stations along the course were fine though, with both water and sports drinks (although I hate those bloody cups, they should have small bottles instead).

The trip to Heinola took about 2,5h from Helsinki by bus, a bit boring but not too bad. I went with Elizabeth, who raced this distance for the first time. She finished as the sixth lady with a respectable time of 1:46:39,8. We managed to find a decent Chinese place to have a meal before heading back to Helsinki, but there’s isn’t much to do in Heinola.

Splits:
5k 19:48
10k 20:21 (40:09 total)
15k 20:24 (1:00:33 total)
20k 20:21 (1:20:54 total)
Total: 21.25k in 1:25:56

I was aiming at a steady sub 4min/km pace, but I managed that only for the first 5k, the average pace for the whole race being 4:02min/km in the end. The splits are quite even though, so my pacing wasn’t bad — it’s just that I couldn’t quite hit the target pace. I tried to speed up after 15k, but there was nothing to be done; I think that one or two 15k Steady-State runs at 4min/km pace or so would’ve helped immensely, but my training has been so-so in the summer. Average HR was 171bpm, which is fairly high, so I don’t think I could’ve gone much faster in these conditions.

Well, I may get another chance to have a go at sub 85min in September at Pääkaupunkijuoksu in Helsinki, but as I understand it’s a rather hilly course (I frequently train in the area)…

Official results here.
Garmin data here.