The Event
The first Helsinki City Run, at that time known simply as The Helsinki Half Marathon, was organised 7th May 1994 with 650 runners. The aim of the event was to offer all runners a chance to test their shape after the winter. Many runners also found it a good test for the Stockholm Marathon and the Helsinki City Marathon. After a few "training years", more emphasis was put to marketing and the number of participants has increased massively since.
In 2010 the Helsinki City Run is organised for the 17th time. The number of participants is now 20 times bigger than in the first organised event, as there are over 13,100 registered runners this year!
This year's event was held on Saturday 8th May 2010.
My Event
So, my first running event for two years and also my first event of any kind on ”foreign soil”. Well, I say “foreign soil” but Finland is now actually my new home.
I started my training 4 months prior to this event so should be in good shape to possible challenge my PB time of 1:43 that I set a few years ago in the Paddock Wood half marathon. However, just before the event I travelled back to England for the first time in 7 months for 10 days in which I did no training and spent probably a little too much time in the pubs. I arrived back in Finland three days before this event so you could say that this was not ideal.
I have stubbornly been doing all my training in miles too, so sat down and tried to work out what my pace should be for the race in kilometres as it would inevitably be marked up. I worked out that a 5:00 pace per kilometre would get me a 1:45 time, so if I could keep a pace just under 5 minutes, that would be good!
And so, race day came on Saturday 8th May 2010. The event started in the early part of the afternoon on a cloudy and slightly windy day with the temperature hovering around the 13C mark. I arrived at the race office in Töölö, Helsinki, with plenty of time to spare and leisurely set about getting changed and ready for the race. The start of the race would begin just outside the Olympic Stadium. I felt my race day preparation was good having eaten a couple of hours before the start and taking on what I would consider the right level of liquids.
Given that this is the largest half marathon in Finland, the race organizers deemed it necessary to split the starters up into groups based on estimated times. The fastest runners would start first and slower runners would be given a group further behind. I had been given one of the first start groups as I had estimated my time to be around 1:43.
So, I lined up ready to go and as the gun went off, I told myself not to get carried away at the beginning as I had experienced that it was so easy to do so in previous events. However, instead of running the 5:00 pace I had decided on, I somehow got it into my head that the pace I should have been running at was 4:00 per kilometre! The first few kilometres were hard and I felt something wasn’t right as I was struggling to keep up with the 4:00 pace I had convinced myself that I had to do! It was about 5-6 km (3 miles) into the race that I realized my mistake, so I immediately slowed my pace down but unfortunately the damage was already done! About 10 km (6 miles) into the race and I remember starting to tire and my legs losing strength! My pace dropped dramatically over the next few kilometers and it became quite a slog. I realised that I wasn’t going to get near the 1:43 time that I wanted and around 16-17 km (10 miles) in, I stopped to walk! DISASTER! The last few kilometers were a real drag and I was just happy to get the finish line and get it over with in the end.
My final time was 1:56:35 which was a big disappointment for me. I had trained hard for 4 months and there was no reason, based on that training, I couldn’t have done a LOT LOT better. One mistake at the beginning on the pace I should have been running at cost me! Still, it was my first event in Finland and was certainly an experience I could learn from! I knew I had unfinished business with this distance and set about finding some other half marathons where I could put this race behind me!
Results
My gun time was 1:56:42. My chip time was 1:56:35. My final position overall was 3,059th out of the 10,397 runners who completed the course.
A full round up of the results can be viewed from here