Tag: Helsinki City Half Marathon

2018 week fifty two

My year in running

My goal for 2017 was to run 2,600 KM. In the autumn I hurt my knee a couple hours before flying to Denmark to race the Copenhagen Half Marathon. An aggravated injury meant I didn’t meet my 2017 goal. I was still recovering at the beginning of 2018, so I set a more reasonable goal to run 2,018 KM. Then in August I hurt my other knee. Then in September, on a crap knee, I passed 2,018 KM. And then, in October, with a crap knee, I raced the Victoria Marathon and barely walked let alone ran again for a few weeks. In mid-December I was easing back into decent weekly milage and noticed that 2,600 KM for the year was within reach. So I went for it, and on December 29 I ran 11.8 KM around Oak Bay for 2,601 KM for the year.

Running races

I ran ten races in 2018, set a bunch of personal best (PB) times, and earned my first age-group podium finish.
First Half 21.1 KM – 1:43:04
West Van 10 KM – 44:06 (PB!)
BMO Half 21.1 KM – 1:34:52 (PB!)
Helsinki 21.1 KM – 1:39:09
Scotiabank 21.1 KM – 1:32:37 (PB!)
Kamloops 21.1 KM – 1:32:20 (PB! & Age group 1st!)
Eastside 10 KM – 41:23 (PB! + PB!)
North Van 10 KM – 43:46
Victoria 42.2 KM – 3:25:59 (PB!)
Moustache Miler 5 KM – 20:28 (PB?)
The Moustache Miler was two firsts for me: it was my first 5 KM race, and the first time I’ve raised money for charity. I expect more of both of those In spite of the Moustache Miler being my only 5 KM race to date, my fastest 5 KM time is 20:21 over the first 5 KM of this year’s Eastside 10 according to Sportstats.

Going places

I’ve drawn a circle around Stanley Park over 200 times and I still love that loop but this year I got to do a few new loops that were a lot of fun. These four are my favourite.

Final run in Helsinki. I thought this city was okay when I arrived and by the end of the week I didn’t want to leave. Some amazing running history there, too.
And then I fell in love with Tallinn. Didn’t hurt that the weather was unusually amazing the whole time we were there.
Stockholm is the first city I took my running stuff along on holiday, and I’ll never holiday without my running stuff again. I didn’t get a Sodermalm loop on that 2016 visit but I did this year.
Surrey?!? I KNOW! But this run was so much fun — down the hill then over a free ferry to Barnston Island. Plus I (currently) have the 3rd overall time looping Barnston Island (and it’s nowhere near my 10 KM PB). If I find myself marooned at the Surrey Sheraton again I’m definitely going for the crown.

Missing in action: the Helsinki City Half Marathon and the Victoria Marathon. I loved idea of racing Helsinki but the route just wasn’t my favourite. Victoria, in spite of setting a pretty huge personal best of over eight minutes, the race was a disappointment and I’m still bitter.

The numbers according to Strava:

Total Distance: 2,601.3 KM
Number of Runs: 226
Average KM/Run: 11.5 KM
Total Time Running: 212 Hours, 50 Minutes
Average Time Every Damn Day in 2018: 35 Minutes
At the beginning of the year I joined a group challenge to run the elevation of Mount Everest — 8,848 metres — and then forgot about it until I was crunching numbers the other night. I ran 38,419 metres of elevation in 2018, or the Everest summit 4.3 times.

Running’s free right?

When I first started running I bought a pair of adidas shoes at Costco for $40 or something, and Joe Fresh shorts and a top from the Superstore. I still wear adidas. JF not so much. I spend a lot more on running now. This year I decided to see how much.
Shoes: $1,434
Clothes: $970
Health: $619
Nutrition: $230
Race Entry: $724
Other: $665
TOTAL: $4,642
These dollars have caveats, of course. My shoe budget includes orthotics that I was not expecting, and I probably have shoes covered for 2019. I exhausted my extended health coverage and kept going to physiotherapy anyway. Race entry includes fees paid this year for races in 2019, but then excludes a few 2018 races paid for in 2017. Other includes a new Garmin watch, which had better not be an annual expense. The bloated Clothes expenditure is just embarrassing. I expect my 2019 total to be a lot less, but I’m a very recent convert to technical running socks.

Next week: New year — reading & running goals for 2019.

2018 week twenty

Books Read:
27. Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl — Carrie Brownstein

Kilometres Ran:
week twenty — 52

To date: 927 KM

I wasn’t a Sleater-Kinney fan. I wasn’t not a fan either. I mean, I didn’t dislike them in the active sense, I just never really listened to them. I’ve also never watched an episode of Portlandia. So why this book? Well, mostly because I won it in the raffle at the Real Vancouver Writers Series even a little bit ago. Times change. I used to be the guy that would buy an arm’s length of raffle tickets and never win anything. I’d be standing there, clutching my plethora of tickets, always the bridesmaid. All that’s long forgotten now. Now I’m the guy that shows up and wins the t-shirt every event. T-shirts coveted by others in attendance that I will likely not wear outside my house because they are either entirely too large (an XL Feminist Killjoy in a bluey sort of grey) or if my size, not exactly my colour, as would be the case this time ’round with the size M Anvil Books in hot pink. And a book about a band I did not listen to and a show that I do not watch. But I enjoyed the book. That era in Pacific Northwest music is close to my heart and brought back a lot of memories for me. Plus I think I now better understand the song “Olympia” from Ninety Pound Wuss‘ self-titled debut album. “It is completely lost on me why Jeff Suffering hates Olympia so much,” thought early-20s me. “JHC that was over 20 years ago,” realizes current me.

This week I flew 7,500 KM to run 21.1 which sounds cool even if it’s not quite the truth. That the Helsinki City Half Marathon was at the same time that we’d planned our annual spring sojourn was coincidence. A happy coincidence non-the-less. Friday we rode bikes to the race festival to collect my bib and race package and race t-shirt. My pink race t-shirt. My dusty pink Helsinki City Half Marathon 2018 t-shirt. Did I mention it’s pink? For those keeping track, I’ve suddenly gone from zero to two t-shirts for Anti-bullying Day.

Pre-race with Lasse Viren.

I wasn’t out to break any PBs. Rather, I wanted to run 4:37 as a bit of practice for my full marathon goal in the fall. Plus the terrain, with seaside breezes and the occasional gusty headwind, and rolling hills throughout, matches what I’m expecting in Victoria on Thanksgiving. I also thought it would be a nice test of pacing during a crowded race. And it was. The course started rather narrow, which made for a very slow first KM and I was bumped a few times before the group spread out. I was on goal up until around 15 KM, and then started to fade. The rolling hills, especially over final few KMs really killed me. The heat didn’t help either.
Pre-race with Paavo Nurmi

I somehow missed the final two KM markers, trusted my watch and started sprinting with what Garmin said was about 500 metres to go, and crossed the finish line inside Telia 5G arena at 1:39:09 for my third fastest chip-timed half marathon. I really wanted to be 1:37:24 but anything sub 1:40 is pretty great.
Official Time: 1:39:09

My overall impression of the course was that they’d picked a route that they really liked and then measured it and realized it was a couple KM short, so they arbitrarily tacked on a dirt trail loop through the woods behind the finish stadium to make it up to 21.1 KM. It was really weird. Otherwise, the race was fun, and the organization that put everything together had it together. I was honestly disappointed when I saw the t-shirt colour. That’s my only real complaint. Now for a couple weeks of casual runs around Helsinki, Tallinn and Stockholm.