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Friday 11 October 2013

Race Review: The Oslo Marathon: 21st September 2013

This blog is a bit of an epic, so surely you'll want to leave a comment at the end should you make it there, or even tweet me @scott_leach


Oslo!

My brother married into a lovely Norwegian family a few years ago and so I have become a little acquainted with Norway and the people over a few visits, whilst getting to know my sister in law and her family.
Norway is a stunningly beautiful country with gorgeous rolling hills giving way to incredible fjords, spectacular mountains and the famous midnight sun in the north. In the cities the buildings reflect the rugged and attractive people. In the countryside pretty wooden buildings pepper the landscape making Norway feel traditional yet ultra modern, stylish and up-to-date. So what could be better than spicing up a trip to see my brother and his family than by running the Oslo marathon? Genius plan! Sometime back the thought had entered my head that I would do a marathon abroad each year and Oslo could be my first.
However, as it turns out, as great a country as Norway is and as great a city as Oslo is, they haven't really got the hang of a big city marathon just yet...

I mentioned the Oslo marathon to my brother's brother-in-law whilst chatting on facebocks one night and two minutes later he had signed me up. I had no excuse now! Somehow, I had managed to get signed up for 3 marathons, before I had even run one. Oslo would be my second after Manchester in April, which went very well.

So I was really looking forward to the visit. Then disaster- my sister-in-law got a job in Malaysia and would be moving before the marathon! I would have to sort out my own travel plans and accommodation....in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Whoops.

I know how to pack for a marathon abroad ;)

Fail to prepare; prepare to fail

As the marathon came closer I periodically checked the website of a certain budget airline- you know the one; they treat you like cattle and don't put enough fuel in the planes- waiting for the price of flights to come down from over £200. Eventually they hit £30 and I booked it, along with an ultra budget hotel in the heart of Oslo. So far so good- it wasn't costing me too much money.

One thing I need to do is keep my race diary a bit more carefully in future as I suddenly realised that September was going to be one hell of a mad month. If I did all I intended to do, I would be racing every weekend throughout the month, starting with The Wetherby 10k, then The Great North Run, Oslo and finishing it up with either the Sheffield 10k or The Horsforth 10k, both of which I've done for the last 2 years. Crazy.

The weather report for Oslo looked great as I set off for Liverpool airport. The cattle handlers herded us around whilst constantly trying to sell us rubbish before we eventually landed at Oslo Torp. I was just glad to avoid the electric cattle prods. The budget airline being the budget airline, Torp is actually about an hour and 45 from Oslo by the Torp Expressen bus which, to my horror, was £42 for a return ticket. And it got worse. I had been on the bus no more than 10 minutes and in Norway no more than 30 when I received a text message from my mobile provider (Orange or EE, depending on how you think) telling me that I was protected by a £42 data limit on my phone whilst abroad......and I had already reached 80% of it from less than 20 minutes on facebook!! Apparently they charge 8 POUNDS per MB. Maybe this trip was going to cost more than I imagined....

Leaving the airport: It's not easy being the world's best photographer you know
The wonderful scenery passed by the window and before I knew it I was at Olso bus terminal, a place that I was soon to become very well acquainted with...

As I looked out of the bus terminal I discovered my next mistake- printing out a very basic google map of Oslo to my hotel wasn't really adequate for finding the marathon expo to pick up my number. I had thought I would be able to get a map in the terminal but I was wrong. I had about an hour before the expo closed otherwise I would have to get up earlier the next day before the race to get my number. Right- route march through Oslo to find the place! Eventually I resorted to using up even more data with google maps, but I managed to find the place.

I realise that marathons make you pick up your number from an expo for a reason, rather than send it to you- so you can be herded around sponsors stands, which was exactly what happened. I have no real objections to this- except, as it was a Norwegian expo it wasn't really very relevant to me and they had set it up so you had to pass every stand before you could pick up your t-shirt on the way out having picked your number and chip up at the entrance. I would have liked to have opted out of this really, but then I might have wondered if I was missing anything. When I reached the end I asked for a small t-shirt only to be told that they had run out, which in this case was lucky as the medium fits me brilliantly! I also rather liked the boot bag it came in:



Using my terrible printed map, a couple of maps on bus stops and the magnets in my head I managed to find my hotel. I had to snigger when I realised the whole place looked and even smelled like an Ikea.
The room was tiny, which I knew having read the reviews, but it was stupidly cheap for Oslo and very neat and tidy with clever touches. The bed was fitted in to a corner and was comfortable. All I needed was a bed to land on so this was perfect. I was distressed to find that the payment hadn't gone through when I originally booked it and so another £110 fell screaming from my account.

How much? Do you accept body parts in payment?   (Not yours though mate, they look knackered)


After a nap I had my next challenge: to find a meal in Oslo without bankrupting myself. Just around the corner from my hotel, I got lucky; beer at only £5.40 per 500m. I supped a jar with a large bowl of carbonara pasta with a very confusing raw egg sitting in half a shelf and a small bowl of pesto. Then back to the hotel for a good, long night's sleep before the race in the morning.

The marathon booklet wasn't a massive help to me as I barely speak English, never mind Norwegian.
 Now I know just how childish it is to laugh at other languages when some of the words are a bit rude in English, but well.....I'm childish. So there. Norway provided me with lots of  "Sorry, come again" moments, or in the American vernacular, the slightly more punchy "Wait...what now?" And on that note let's have a closer look at that marathon booklet....

Wait...what now?
More of that later....

Marathon Morn

In the morning I had to endure a Yorkshireman's nightmare: an expensive buffet that I couldn't take advantage of. I paid nearly £12 for the breakfast at the hotel to avoid having to find a place and whereas I would normally have stuffed my face fit to last for at least until the evening, I had to stick at a bowl of cereal and a coffee so as not to feel too full during the race. I now realise I should have stuffed my pockets full of whatever I could carry. Amateur mistake!

My hotel was only 5 minutes from the race start and I wandered down there in plenty of time.

Way to fill us full of confidence.... (Only in Norway would the Ambulance be a modified Mercedes!)
Really oddly, they were setting us off in 3 waves, despite there only being 3000 doing the full marathon length. I had been put in the back section and I messaged the organisers on facebook slightly panicking- I really didn't want to set off at the back! They assured me I could move forward and there wouldn't be any problem. In the event, they were right and I started close to the front with no problems.

On the day of the "Oslo Maraton" there would be 23000 people running, but only 3000 of those were in the sold-out marathon itself. In what I found a very odd state of affairs, the marathon was to start first, followed by the half then the 10k. Some of the 10k runners not starting until 6pm. So essentially, they shut off large parts of Oslo for a full Saturday!

The start had a large scaffolding over it and the MCs and warm up people bounced around on it trying to gee people up as usual. I wasn't waiting around too long in the slightly chilly air before the hooter went and we were off through the sparse crowds. A quick left turn and we were on the harbour front. "Harbour" is the best word that I can think of to describe it, although it is far too grand for what it was. Depressingly, less than 200 metres in to the race, we passed this point with the 29km marker.


We would go on to pass this point a further 2 times before the sign was correct. I hadn't realised just how bad that would be for my moral.

As usual I had thought about what I expected from the race in the days before. I had raced the 2 previous weekends and broke my PB for 10k, then took 9.5 minutes off my half marathon PB the following weekend. I knew that these two hard races would mean that the marathon would be very tough. Luckily, I picked up a good tip from the terrible book on marathons that I started to read when I got in to Norway; to set myself more than one target time: One I would be satisfied with, one I'd be very pleased with and one I'd be ecstatic with. Respectively I set them as: Breaking my PB; The London marathon good for age time of 3:05 and  Less than 3 hours.
I know it seems odd to have my lowest target as a new PB but I knew that I was in much better shape than at my only other marathon in Manchester in April, so it seemed very reasonable to assume that that would be a relatively easy target.
I also came up with a tactic that might seem odd; I was almost certain that I would blow up between 18 and 20 miles. I just hadn't managed to get enough distance training in in between the races. With this in mind I decided to go out reasonably quickly and just try to get as far as I could before I would have to slow. I was certain that it wouldn't matter at what time I got to that point, I would still hit the wall. In hindsight I still stick by this slightly odd logic although I had to wonder if I was setting myself up with a self-fulfilling prophecy and that maybe I wouldn't blow up at all.

The Oslo opera house

Round and round and round and round and round and round and round.........

So around the headland we went for the first of three passes and soon to the opera house. I've had a look around this wonderful modern building the last time I visited Oslo and it really is a great piece of architecture. You can just see from the photo above that you can walk right up on to the roof. Alongside the opera house they had set up a small stage with some ballerinas dancing to europop- a nice touch which I enjoyed a lot. But definitely not in a dirty, pervy old man way, oh no.

And so it started to go downhill, although not literally. The opera house itself is a fantastic building, but right now, it's sitting in the middle of a gigantic building site. Unfortunately, the organisers had decided to run us through it more than once.......in fact, the route was a loop through the giant building site, so we actually made 6......SIX passes through it. With not a single supporter to cheer us. A small stage had been set up in the middle of it however, and a drummer was doing a great job along to a sound track. It didn't make up for the building site. To paraphrase an old joke- Oslo is a really nice city, it'll be brilliant when it's finished...
The 6th and final time I saw the opera house, my fantasies of vandalising it had become huge on a grand scale and involved explosives and tanks.

From the building site the route went over a flyover and then around the bus terminal, around another loop and then...............back past the bus terminal. As the route was a fantastically confusing multi lap route (Although not the same lap!!) we actually passed the bus terminal SIX times. Think I'm joking? Sadly not...

The grey building; that's the bus terminal. 6 passes didn't improve it
At the expo I had studied the marathon route. The map was criss-crossed with varying coloured lines in a terribly confusing way. I couldn't for the life of me work out how the marathon was going to work. Post-run, I think, think, that it happened this way- 2 laps of the 10k route, then a lap of the 1/2 marathon route, then a final lap that included most of the 1/2 marathon route again, with a couple of extra bits to make it up to marathon length. Bearing in mind that the 10k route was part of the 1/2 route and 2 x 10ks plus a half plus another half is 60-odd-k-ish; they cut off some chunks somewhere, I'm just not sure where. Confused? I was. I have to admit though; the staging was remarkable, for instance, when we came to the loop in the building site for the third time, the barriers had been moved and the loop extended. I had to wonder how they made sure everyone did the correct route?

So back to my race. I knew that to go under 3 hours I would need to average under 4:16 per kilometre. Last week at the half marathon I had averaged 3:59, so it seemed possible and for the first half, I sat at 4:12. I was constantly working out the race maths; how much time was this giving me in hand? How far did I have to get before I could afford to slow down? During a race my mental arithmetic goes entirely to pot so the answer changed lots of times, but it's a good way to pass the time. I tried to settle in to a 4:12 pace, but it was hard from the start. I quickly realised that the last couple of races had taken a lot out of me.

I'll skip ahead a little. The route was, in the main, phenomenally boring even without taking the building site in to consideration. Lots of running through deserted areas of town and even in the populated areas there were few people around.
The route, in all its erm...glory

A couple of nights before I set off, Jauntyhippedgirl had asked if I had looked at reviews of the race, I admitted I hadn't. As I was running it as part of a planned trip to see my brother, I hadn't bothered. And when I looked, it made grim reading. I couldn't find all that many reviews, but the ones I could, gave the same opinion of the marathon- repetitive and boring. One said that he always did the race as it was close to where he lived, but he couldn't understand anyone flying in to do it. Whoops. I guess the organiser's response to this was to add the music stations. Or more of them. The google translation of the emails telling me about the planned entertainment provided me with some yucks.



I was looking forward to focussing on carpet and seeing how they invited life around the course. Another email translation claimed they would "create life" around the course. The mind boggled at that one!

The music stations, frankly, were a bit crap. Bored looking marshals stood on their own next to sound systems pumping out generic euro-pop. I can't say they were especially motivating. The large areas of deserted city, though pretty enough, it being Oslo, were quite dispiriting. A few areas right in the centre and around the start area (We passed through the start area 3 times) had some modest crowds. In a couple of places people were banging away on cow bells, which was great, it made me really feel that I was running in Scandinavia. If that atmosphere was extended around more of the course the atmosphere would have been amazing. As it was, a few people shouted out "Heia" (to sound like hey ya!) which means "go on". Sometimes it was shouted with more vigour than others and occasionally in such a dull monotone that it was comical. At first it sounded great to hear it, but like anything that is shouted out during a marathon, by around the 35th k, people could be shouting out "Free naked models and money" and you'd still want to punch them in the throat, or maybe that's just me?

The Balloon B*stard

Several pacers had been provided for the race. The forums kept mentioning "following the balloons". I wonder what the hell they meant, until I saw the pacers had large helium balloons attached to them. The fastest pacer was 3 hours, so I had a target- stay in front of  "balloon b*stard" (BB) as I had named him.
At the first loop through the building site the I caught sight of BB as the field looped around the same road. He was a fair way behind me. Cool. The race went on; opera house, bus station, ghost town. Opera house, bus station, ghost town. Opera house, bus station, ghost town.
And we were at the halfway point. I was flagging. Badly. I was already experiencing discomfort in my leg muscles; way too early. We rounded the loop in the building site again, and there he was. BB. I knew I would see him soon as the average time on my GPS watch told me I was slowing and there was nothing I could really do about it. The sight of him spurred me on. He was surrounded by what seemed like hundreds of people all trying to break the magic 3 hour mark. The thought of all these people having to pass me, all of them judging me for what they will have thought of as "some idiot who went off too fast", and who knows? maybe they were right. It kept me going for a while, but I knew it couldn't happen. I had to make the decision to let the sub 3 hour time go. I didn't debate with myself for long, I knew it had been a looooooooong shot. Not long after, I knew I had to let the good for age time go too. For a while I entertained the thought that I should aim for last year's good for age time of 3:10, but then realised that was just pointless.

Time for some not-so-pretty pictures

Ok, let's break this up for a bit, here's some of the sights we passed, sometimes multiple times and some better than others

The 3rd and final time down these cobbles was at about 40km. Not nice!

One of the museums, sorry, don't ask me which one

Yep, a lot of the buildings looked like this!

Oslo's Hard Rock Cafe

Well, maybe not in a marathon....


I think this guy was on the marathon committee 

Yep, the building site was pretty huge, and this is just a small part of it

The stunning dock area we ran through. Erm...

We passed this point 6 times too...

This photo probably doesn't do justice, but these were really amazing buildings


This was the turn around point that they miraculously moved at the third pass, pretty, huh?

Someone liked playing with lego when they were a child


Skip To The End

Now my expectations had been rounded severely down, I was just trying to keep going at a reasonable pace. I was pleased that I seemed to be holding at around 4:30 per k. In a discussion with Jaunty, I had mentioned that I had actually managed to up my pace in the middle of the Great North Run for the first time ever during a race. She said that she had read in one of the many running books she's read, that one runner said that sometimes, when they felt tired, rather than slow down, they would speed up. During the last half of the race, each time I felt myself flagging, I tried it and to my amazement, it worked. I would be able to run faster for quite a bit before slowing down again, but I wouldn't slow back down to the original pace for a while.

I remembered at the Belper Rugby Rover feeling much better each time I stopped and stood still at the checkpoints, drunk a couple of cups of water and ate a jelly baby or three. When I set off after each stop, I ran off much quicker feeling refreshed. With about 15km to go, I decided I would stop at each water stop. Because of the multiple laps there were a lot of water stops but they were spaced quite randomly. Annoyingly, the water was being handed out in small cardboard cups. Try drinking from these running at speed without throwing most of it over your face...I tried lots of times, but didn't manage it. Since then I have heard the technique is to fold a slight lip into the front of the cup. I'll have to practice that one. In all honesty, I think a major city marathon ought to give out bottles, or even the squashy pouches that we got at Manchester- those were good and much more difficult to turn an ankle on a discarded one.

There was one section of the route that was part of the marathon only. It headed west out of the city. We passed through some seriously expensive, beautiful housing. With no one there. No one. Zero. None. And then to a marina. The marina was gorgeous and I found it the most enjoyable part even though it wasn't cordoned off and cyclists rode down the same path we were on in the other direction. The path took us past a huge moored ferry. Amazing.

No Really, Get On With It, Scott

The water stations couldn't come quickly enough; I started chugging the proffered sports drinks (in the small cardboard cups) but declined the banana halves. And so I edged closer to the end. Speeding up and slowing down. Sometimes moving at sub 3 hour pace and sometimes much, much slower, trying to regather myself at each drinks station until we headed down the cobbled stretch with the Royal Palace in the distance (Thankfully they didn't make us run up the sizable hill to it) and the 41k and 42k markers passed. So at least I knew I was going to make it whilst still running. Sometime around there was the previously promised belly dancers. If you can manage to appreciate belly dancers 41k into a marathon you are a much better man than I! We also barrelled straight down the centre of one of the main shopping streets which had been impressively cordoned off with 6 foot-tall barriers meaning the fairly plentiful shoppers were trapped in tiny rat runs whereas we runners trotted down a wide thoroughfare which was hardly necessary given the sparse volume of runners. The shoppers looked at us with bemused bewilderment.

Finally the finish line appeared again and mercifully for the final time. I speeded up enough to try to look impressive as I crossed the line, I failed of course, and crossed the line looking like my usual drunken monkey.

The Nobel Building
The finish line was right in front of the Nobel prize building which it would be entirely inappropriate to say was appropriate. The medal was placed around my neck and I hobbled off to find beer, but before that I took off my shoes and socks and bathed my feet in a beautiful cold fountain, to the amusement of some of the onlookers.  The search for beer took me a while as it seemed that the organisers had either not put on a beer tent or had hidden it well. I thought I had read that there was a beer tent somewhere but my search was fruitless so the exciting after party never emerged. However, I did find a beer eventually.

The very beer I supped after the marathon; and what a snip at only £7.40......
I positioned myself with a view of the finishing straight and watched some of my marathon colleagues finishing. By now the temperature was perfect at around 20 degrees. A couple of Norwegians next to me started chatting and were surprised when I confirmed that I had finished my marathon half an hour ago. I asked them if they knew the German word -Schadenfreude-?
They looked perplexed. It means, I told them "To enjoy someone else's misery" I explained-Positioning oneself to watch other runners coming in having finished ones own marathon.

Ok, let's break it up again for some more, "Wait, what now?" moments...


Erm, thanks for pointing it out....

Wait, what now? Is that a giant silver ball sack and misshapen cock?

Never chase after children in your digger...

My Norwegian isn't great, but I think they don't want us to go any further AND *snigger* Hi-5!

A what hall now?

No, these pants are just a bit tight

Erm, no thanks, I'll have salt and vinegar 

It's been said before
And here are my winnings
The only "selfie" I've ever taken, about an hour after finishing. Glad to say I look just s much a twat as everyone does in a selfie
Finishing the marathon by myself with no one cheering me on or there to meet me was a slightly lonely experience and I probably wouldn't recommend anyone to fly in and out so quickly when doing a marathon.
Later that evening, after a shower and a nap (A hotel room with  bath wouldn't have gone a miss) eating alone wasn't much fun and I headed back to the hotel pretty early.

The view from my hotel room

Summary

I'll reiterate that Oslo is a great city, clean, metropolitan, stylish and modern mixed in with the traditional and Norway is a wonderful country, but unfortunately, they've some way to go with the marathon.

They've obviously been trying; they put out a lot of music stations for example, but in the end, the people of Oslo just haven't taken to this event. If you watch any skiing you'll know that Norwegians are capable of making a lot of noise and creating a great atmosphere, but sadly, not for this marathon yet.

There are some really major problems with the race:

Lack of crowds
Repetitive, boring route
No energy gels etc (Although the bananas were a nice touch)
Cardboard cups instead of bottles or similar
Multi-lap route
Really average t-shirt and medal that I am not even sure was specific to the marathon
Nothing is set up for international runners

I really do want to be positive about my first marathon abroad, but, well.....there's not a lot

The boot bag is very nice
Oslo and Norway are lovely
The few spectators that were enthusiastic, especially those with cow bells
What they did do was well organised
The ballerinas at the opera house
*Addit* A tracker system for the runners was live on the internet and Jaunty managed to follow it
I'm really struggling now.....

And one huge, annoying bug-bear. A marathon is 26 miles 385 yards or 42.195km. Exactly. That's it. Not a yard less, not a metre more.
What it isn't, is 3k, 5k, 10k, 13.1 miles or anything else for that matter.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand breathe.

So all in all, no, I wouldn't do it again, but did I regret it? No, not at all. I've now got my first marathon abroad out of the way and learned a lot of useful lessons along the way.

A lonely pair of gloves I spotted discarded on the route the next day. The left one may or may not, be giving me the finger


Chocolate milk with a picture of a moose from Torp airport. What more could you want to aid your marathon recovery?
And the link to my garmin http://connect.garmin.com/activity/380214469

Did you really get this far? Well, I broke my PB by 6 minutes or summat, coming in with an official time of 3:11:09