Post Varvet

I completed the half marathon (Göteborgsvarvet), here are my results:

5 km 27:29 (5:29 min/km)
10 km 55.18 (5:31min/km)
15 km 1:24:45 (5.39 min/km)
21 km 2:04:06 (5.54 min/km)

What happened after the 15km? I had pain in my knee at 20 km! and had to walk for some ½ km. I was lucky because my oldest daughter was positioned right there and she cheered me up a little bit so that I managed to finalise the last km running. Now I can tell you that this half marathon was somewhat a nightmare - to my running style and knee. I love to RUN, I hate jogging, (I've never understood that kind of running, you'd better walk?). Now imagine me, being in the second last starting group (because I registered late) and having approx. 37,000 runners in front of me (about 6 minutes between starting groups) and that you expect yourself to concentrate on your own running. Not possible though, only about 20% of the 21 km allowed some kind of running where I could harmonise my running (step length, speed). The rest was; crowdy, narrow, people walking, people stopping, audience crossing!, >5 types of running ground, a lot of turns etc. In other terms, completely different from my training and preparation. If I decide to make it next year; I now know how to prepare. You pick out that weekend in the end of the month (salary weekend) when the city is crowded with people. Then you start running up and down on the most densely populated pedestrian street (Kungsgatan).

The reason to my frustration is of course that I prefer running at my own speed and on a straight track. Varvet offered me loads of speed changes, track changes in order to keep close to my own speed. And that's the reason why my knee started to pain before finish. I also need to critize the management behind Göteborgsvarvet. They set a new record in numbers of registrations (>40,000) this year but have they taken that into account when designing the track width? I'm not so experienced in other international long distance running events, but can it be as bad as this?