Stockholm Half Marathon 2011

Well, the first and most likely last half marathon of this season is over and what can I say... The Swedes definitely know how to arrange an event. The half marathon in Stockholm was in just about every way better than its Finnish counterparts, and not least because I've managed to run my best times there. Everything just seems to work there and the overall atmosphere was amazing.

Related to my last entry about measurements, I guess it's only good to present some measurements from this exercise as well. My target time was 2h00m00s (my previous time from Stockholm was 2h00m21s, or something thereabout). This means 7200 seconds or 341.26 seconds per kilometer (or 5m41.26s) for 21.098 kilometers. And the result? 1h57m36s according to my measurements (the official time was 2s better, but as I took measurements with my own watch and the kilometer times are based on those, I'll just use the 36s one for the review of the run).

The chart below is probably the most relevant one, considering that I wasn't able to get my heart rates due to some technical glitches. The diagram shows the per kilometer deviations from the target time and the red line shows the average deviation from the target per kilometer over the entire run. The biggest thing to note is the profile of the diagram, which I think has slightly improved when compared to previous events. My main sin, as shared with so many other runners as well, is starting too fast and then  tiring out when the going gets real. The positive bit is that I was able to keep the initial pace fairly well intact and at no point did I entirely collapse.

This time I was able to find the two hour pace runner and tagged along for the first eight kilometers. This resulted in the fairly accurate times for the first four kilometers after which the pace runners in fact sped up a bit. The seven kilometer blip is due to a drinking station hassle. The pace keepers started slowing down a bit at around eight kilometers to apparently adjust the pace back to the two hour target, but considering the relatively good feeling I continued going at my own pace and decided that as long as the pace runners don't catch me, I'll be very well off in respect to my target.

One thing that separates Stockholm from Helsinki is that the amount of entertainment along the course is significantly higher. I didn't keep exact count, but I think there were five or so DJs spread along the course and two or three live orchestras playing music. This was in fact very helpful in keeping up the pace and positive mood during the mid part of the event. During the 18th kilometer my run started dragging a bit as can be seen from the diagram. It turns out, however, that Prodigy's latest album is a very decent approach to keeping the pace at least somewhat reasonable after switching to defensive running and changing the focus from running as quickly as possible to ensuring that the original target is at least met. And of course the fact that the last kilometer or two of the track were surrounded by people cheering you on helped as well. Overall the run was surprisingly enjoyable, especially when compared to the HCR'10 and Espoo Rantamaraton fiascos of last year.

Finally, here are some of the official statistics from the organizers for my run:

Split	time	diff	min/km	km/h	place
5K	0.28.17	28.17	05.40	10.61	5869
10K	0.55.18	27.01	05.25	11.10	5280
15K	1.21.42	26.24	05.17	11.37	4843
20K	1.51.06	29.24	05.53	10.20	4937
Finish	1.57.34	06.28	05.54	10.18	5086

Overall there were about 10500 or so runners, so in that respect I'm also relatively satisfied that I finished in good mid-range territory ranking-wise. The next steps from here will be to try to solidify my running and try to be able to consistently run sub-2 hour times. I don't hold any serious expectations of being able to improve my time too drastically and don't really even hold that as a priority. For the rest of the winter I think my focus will be on learning how to swim. Additionally a classmate of mine also suggested taking up Savate, which I at least tentatively agreed to. So, essentially the goals for next year will most likely be to run at least one half-marathon with a target time of less than two hours (ideally matching 1h57m34s or faster) and to complete a sprint triathlon with no specific other target (if I'm not able to find a suitable triathlon from Finland to try, then I'll just test out the triathlon by myself to see how that feels). It may be also reasonable to revisit these targets early next year to see what the feeling then is and possibly revise them as needed, depending on e.g. how the swimming goes.

But for now I'm just going to kick back for a moment and try to get my legs back into shape again.