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The one piece
of advice everyone gives you when you are injured is to rest as
time is the best healer. When you have told everyone you know that
you are going to run 50 half marathons and you are doing it for
charity, this advice isn’t on the option list. For the past few
months my right leg has decided that it doesn’t want to be a team
player and even with a small fortune spent on sports massages,
greatly reduced training it was not showing any signs of talking to
the rest of my body. I had also paid a rather expensive race entry
as well as flights and a hotel. So failure was not an option and
off to Copenhagen we flew (we being me and Victoria aka wife,
“coach” and rubbish meteorologist).
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If you ever
watch the London Marathon or the Great North Run you will see that
the elite athletes don’t wear numbers they have their name in big
letters instead, other elite runners, not famous enough for this
are usually allocated the low numbers. For some reason, Copenhagen
thought it would be funny to put even more pressure on this runner
by 1) printing my name in big letters and 2) allocating me number
701 (in a field of 23000), which was printed under the giant name
in smaller numerals. This could be the nearest I get to being an
elite athlete!!
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The reason I
question Victoria’s weather forecasting skills, is that her logic
normally involves checking several on-line sites until she finds a
one that she likes and that is then the official weather forecast
for the day. I now probably more accurately forecast that I will
suffer great pain for this paragraph when she reads it. Anyway, the
forecast by Mrs C required sun glasses and a hat to protect against
the blazing sun. To be fair that was 100% accurate for the start of
the race.
So, after two
great days sightseeing in Copenhagen I joined 20,000 plus other
runners at the start of the race. The Copenhagen Half was really
casual, each runners number was colour coded to show their
estimated finish time and rather than forced into a pen like you
are in races such as the Great North Run, you could join any group
you wanted to. In the UK, this would mean 50,000 people fighting to
stand in front of Mo Farah, but in Denmark, the vast majority of
people actually started in their recommended position. This created
a really friendly atmosphere of runners of similar abilities and
once the race started no issues with big speed variances and
congestion.
At around
11:15 Sunday morning the elite runners left, I finally reached the
start line some 20 minutes later. The course was through the city
centre, with crowds lining route almost all of the 13.1 miles. I
made the decision to not run to a target time, but instead run to a
pace I felt comfortable with, all was going well and the sun was
shining for the first 4 miles. Then it got interesting…
The first sign of the weather changing was a few spots of rain.
Then the sky got increasingly darker, closely followed by thunder,
lightning and then torrential rain. I don’t mind running in the
rain, but to have to do so with forks of lightning all around was a
little frightening. Then the fun really started…
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The rain slowly started to change to hailstones, which
got steadily larger in size and heavier in quantity. At around 7
miles I had one of the most surreal running experiences I have ever
had. The majority of the 20,000 runners started to take cover in
doorways and anywhere else they could escape the storm. Being a
stupid northerner, I saw this as an opportunity to improve my
already rubbish position, so onwards I persevered. I ran on with
another Danish runner and we pretty much had the course to
ourselves. It is difficult to accurately explain the intensity of
the storm, other than to use a childhood expression which sums it
up “It bloody knacked”. I didn’t realise how bad it was until I got
to the end of the race and discovered both arms covered in tiny
bruises from the hailstone impacts. It may have only lasted 5 or 10
minutes but is was one of the funniest running experience I have
ever had.
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As the storm subsided the soft runners came back out
of the shadows and with 5 or so miles to the finish the sun again
came out. This caused the next running problem, when you add bright
sunlight to a route white with frozen water, flash floods appear. For
some reason, most of the runners, already soaked to the skin from
the earlier rain, thought they needed to tiptoe around the puddles.
Sod that. I was already so wet, I had had dryer baths in the past,
my option was route one, straight through the puddles regardless.
This is not somethings the Danes embraced and when the rest of the
field went in single file around the lakes that covered the
majority of the roads, one Geordie bull-dozed straight through the
middle (I use the word bull-dozed as skipping over the surface is
not something that describes my running style), and again made up a
few more places and valuable seconds.
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Given the
extreme conditions, I crossed the line in just over 2hrs 15minutes,
far better than I had ever thought, and amazingly the weather had
completely taken my mind of my painful right leg. Crossing the
line, as is the norm, I was given a medal and immediately received
a text confirming my time, job done. There then came an
announcement on the PA system to say that the race was now
cancelled with immediate effect. Running through the storms had got
me in just in time. I later discovered the reason for the race
being stopped was due to 2 runners being struck by lightning,
fortunately not to seriously I believe.
So, by the
skin of my teeth (and some of the skin of my arms), Half Marathon
number 49 was completed and along with it the challenge to run a
half marathon in every country in Western Europe. Denmark completed
a list that includes England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland,
Netherlands, Spain, Norway, Portugal, Czech Republic, Sweden,
France, Switzerland, Finland, Belgium, Iceland, Italy, Austria,
Germany and Luxembourg.
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