Last things first: Oslo half marathon 2014

My running buddy Benedicte and I booked our tickets and hotel for this event several months ahead of time, and we left Bergen on an 08:30 flight to Oslo on the day of the race, Saturday September 25. Our starting time was just before 2 pm, so this seemed to be a perfect plan, but as the race day got closer we both got a bit worried about what would happen in case of delays. Fortunately everything worked perfectly, the flight was on time, and at 11 am on the race day, we had already fetched our race numbers and arrived at the hotel.

I had a bit of pain in my legs from a test run on Wednesday the same week, but with compression and massaging, everything felt actually quite good on the race day. After advice from my trainer Ketil, I had bought compression socks and wore them on the flight. Flying on the day of the race is after all not the best way to get ready for it, even if everything works on time.

I really wanted to finish in around 1:50! I had made Bergen City in 2:00, I was in much better shape now than then, and everybody kept saying that Oslo is so much easier than Bergen, because it is much flatter. Well, it did not work out quite that way for me. I realized during the race that it is really of great help to know the course. In Bergen I knew exactly where I was running, how long it was until the end of that road, that hill, etc, whereas in Oslo I was completely lost. The few hills arrived towards the end, I started to get exhausted, and I had no idea how long an uphill would last, although we had of course studied the map beforehand. Until the 18th km I managed to keep my schedule of 1:50, but at that point my legs and feet really started to hurt. Still, frantically calculating in my head, I was thinking that I would be able to finish in 1:52 in the worst case. Towards the end it was so painful that the only thought in my head was “don’t start walking, don’t start walking”. I finished in 1:55:01. Not extremely happy, but not devastated either. I think one of the reasons I got pain towards the end was that I did not include enough mileage in my training towards Oslo. I did a lot of intervals which gave me a great increase in speed, but I think I should have done a few more longer runs close to the race.

In the evening of the run, while lying on our beds in our hotel room, Benedicte and I both exclaimed that we would never ever run a half marathon again. (Just the same day during lunch we were talking about running a full marathon and being really optimistic about it…) Fortunately, the next morning everything felt better, and we both agreed that we were already looking forward to Bergen City half marathon 2015!

Trying to be as objective as I can, I must say that Bergen City Marathon was much better organized than Oslo Marathon. The half marathon course in Bergen is a proper loop, whereas in Oslo we kept running back and forth along boring areas. The drink stations in Oslo were a joke! No food at all (in Bergen we got bananas and chocolate) and the last station was just 2 km before finish. (I even subscribed to sports gel, but ended up drinking my own gels.) On the positive side, the crowd in Oslo was really great towards the finish; at one point I did actually start walking and several people cheered me to start running again. It is also a great idea to print the first names on the race numbers. The crowd was shouting my name and cheering me on during the last kilometer; that was great fun!

Next year? Bergen, for sure! Oslo, probably not.