Stockholm Marathon

Having managed to persuade a friend to run a second marathon the search was on to find a suitable destination to tempt him out to play.  We needed somewhere 'interesting', preferably somewhere we hadn't been before and definitely somewhere that was easy to get to.  Stockholm seemed to fit the bill.  It had the advantage of being held on a Saturday rather than a Sunday, which meant that we could have a day to relax, post marathon, before flying home. 

Six of us, five runners and a solo support team, flew out on Wednesday of half term, we spent the first few days doing 'tourist stuff' of which there is plenty.  We barely scratched the surface of this beautiful city.  We had factored in an afternoon to 'do the expo' based on Boston, Paris and London marathon expos we thought that this would be just about enough. I think we spent about 30 minutes there - and that was only because I was so cold that I went back to buy a long sleeved top at the last minute.  

Saturday morning dawned bright, sunny and much warmer than the previous few days.  We had a leisurely breakfast at the hotel.  Just what does one eat, and when, for a marathon that starts at noon?  Noon, for heaven's sake!  Right when we should be thinking about finding somewhere to eat lunch was when they were expecting us to start running! Sunglasses were retrieved from bags, sunscreen was liberally applied to exposed skin and we headed to the start.  We'd been told that all bags must be checked by 11am and so, along with everyone else, we decided to arrive just before 11am to start the fun, pre marathon warmup of standing in queues - the bag drop one wasn't too bad, but the queues for the portaloos were HUGE as there did not seem to be enough portaloos for such a big crowd.  We then waited, in the sun (24c) on the astroturf, trying to understand the announcements over the tannoy, before deciding that we might as well try to make our way to the start.  

The Swedish national anthem was sung at the start line, and then we were off.  It was very crowded at the start and there were a lot of people who had optimistically predicted times much faster than they were going to achieve as they were walking within the first kilometre!  Quite near the start the course split - without any warning - this was a bit alarming, even more so when we later heard that the winner of the marathon had been sent the wrong way TWICE during the race.  He ran an extra 1.1k and despite this extra distance he missed breaking the course record by less than one minute.  

Poor signage was a feature of this race.  The kilometre markers were few and far between, the water stations were frequent, but most of the volunteers tended to stand behind the tables (which were only on one side of the road) rather than in front of them handing out cups.  This meant that if you wanted to grab water you had to slow right down and pick a cup off the table - it got quite congested!  

The route was beautiful - we were taken round lots of beautiful buildings, over lots of bridges as we hopped from island to island.  It is just as well that the scenery was stunning because the crowds were somewhat muted.  It felt as though they were waiting for the person they knew to run past - they would cheer them and then fall silent again. 

I'd run the first few miles with Husbando, but knew that he would want to run faster than me.  I was in some discomfort with Morten's Neuroma and hadn't really trained for this race.  I wasn't overly worried as I was just doing this one 'for fun!'  I wanted to get home in under four hours, but that was it.  Husbando wanted to get a BQ (Boston Qualifying) time.  Given that his target was four minutes faster than my PB I'd have been silly to try to keep up!

The route is far from flat, that and the surprisingly warm weather, seemed to take their toll on a lot of runners.  There were lots of walkers from the halfway point onwards.  You generally get one or two people who have blown up having gone out too fast, but this was different, I was running past people who were walking all the time.   

The finish line was in the Olympic Stadium.  Here there was a little more crowd support, but I think I was oblivious to it!  Monday night track training kicked in, I moved to the inside lane and picked up the pace!  Not sure how fast I ran that last 300m, but it bought my pace for the last half mile down to 8.15min/mile (overall for the marathon was something like 8.42min/mile and I'd slowed down for the previous few miles).  

The rest of the gang had run well - PBs for two of them, including a BQ for Husbando.  Post race faffing occurred.  Funny how hard it is to even walk the minute you stop.  Husbando is now eagerly awaiting the opening of the Boston marathon registration process, the other PB has told us to shoot him if he ever mentions running a third marathon.  

Would I run Stockholm marathon again?  Probably not, it felt a little disorganised at times, but I would definitely come back to Stockholm.  I would very probably run a half marathon.  In fact I think that foreign half marathons might be the way forward.  They don't take over the whole trip the way a marathon does!  My other regret about this trip is that I didn't get to do a Swedish parkrun.  It wasn't sensible, or practical given the timings, to run one on Saturday and, because I had to be back in school on Monday, we couldn't stay to run the extra 'Sweden Day' parkrun on Monday.  Hopefully we can go back to Sweden soon...