Category: Half Marathon

Stockholm Half Marathon

In June of 2022, my wife and I decided to sign up for the Stockholm Half Marathon scheduled for September 17th. This would be our first half marathon since the Cowtown Half Marathon in Fort Worth, Texas in May of 2021 and just our third race since we moved to Stockholm in August of 2021. After a year of easy running around Stockholm, I was ready to get serious and follow a plan built for speed.

Half Marathon Training

Using my Runner’s World plus membership, I downloaded a 10-week sub-2 hour plan for my wife Lynn and both a 1:45 and a 1:30 10 week plan for myself. Having run a 1:37 half in February 2021, I decided that would be my goal for Stockholm. The main difference between my two plans was the pace of the runs on interval days, so I selected a pace about halfway between the two plans.

Starting 10 weeks out from the race, Day 1 of our half marathon training was on July 11th. We were on our home trip back to Texas for the month of July and it was hot! Since we had moved from Chicago to the Dallas area in 2013, we had never experienced such a prolonged period of heat with daytime temperatures consistently over 100 degrees. One day the temperature even peaked at 108. Our runs started before sunrise, but the temperature was still above 80 degrees and humid.

Training went very well the first week and Lynn and I took a side trip to visit our oldest daughter who was interning for a company in Allentown, PA. Looking for a place to do our long run, we found Lehigh Valley Parkway which had beautiful trails that weaved through towering trees. We enjoyed the cooler weather in Pennsylvania and kept our training on track during the trip.

Lehigh Valley Parkway, Stockholm Half Marathon, Marathon Training
Lehigh Valley Parkway

Injury!

The second week of training, however, is where the wheels came off for me. During my cool down after my second track session I felt discomfort in my right achilles tendon. I finished my 2-mile cool down, but when I got home, I was walking gingerly. Still, I was hopeful that I would bounce back after a day off.

On Saturday, on our club run with the Prosper Running Club, my achilles tendon was quite tight and at mile 4 of our 8-mile run I felt a sharp pain and had to stop. After convincing my running mates to continue without me, I ran/walked, mostly walking, back to my car. Finding my phone, I went online and much to my chagrin, found that achilles injuries could take anywhere from 2 to 8 weeks to fully heal depending on the severity of the injury. It was time to rest right after I started to ramp up training.

Maybe it’s the wisdom of 20 years of running, or maybe it was fear of a serious injury that would jeopardize our European family vacation in August, but I didn’t run again for two weeks. We returned to Sweden on August 1st, bringing our son and youngest daughter with. Our oldest daughter would arrive a week later after her internship concluded at which point, we would travel around Western Europe. On August 5th I joined my wife on her interval run. We ended up running 7 miles including warm up and cool down, and following my wife’s pace, I felt fine.

I had been excited about running around Lake Brunnsviken with my son since we made his travel plans. The lake is about 8 miles around with crushed gravel trails and mostly shaded by trees. It’s one of my favorite places to run in Stockholm and only half a mile north of where we live. Having run with my wife successfully the day before, my son and I ventured out on Saturday at a faster pace. Unfortunately, I felt the tightness again and around the halfway point I urged my son to run ahead. At mile 6, the sharp pain started again, and I walked and limped the rest of the way home. I guess I needed more than 2 weeks to heal and probably should not have entertained back-to-back speed work and a long run.

Lake Brunnsviken Run, Half Marathon Training, Run Training
Lake Brunnsviken Run in Stockholm with my son

I decided to stick to walking for another two weeks as we started our European tour. I won’t go into all the details here, but the 6 of us (my eldest daughter’s boyfriend came with us) had a fabulous time visiting Munich, Lucerne, the Black Forest, Nancy France, Paris, Normandy, and Amsterdam. While I didn’t run, I did average over 20,000 steps per day which I hoped would preserve some level of my fitness. During the entire trip, my achilles felt good.

On August 20th, after my older 2 children returned to Texas for school, I joined my wife for her 10 mile long run at about 9 minute per mile pace. My achilles tendon felt good, and I was back in business. Or so I thought.

On Tuesday, I got up early to put in 4 easy miles before work and only made it half a block before stabbing pain from my achilles stopped me in my tracks. Frustrated, I walked a mile to get some exercise in and then returned home. Now I was a little angry as well as frustrated so after work, I decided to try again. My daughter has archery practice on Tuesday evenings about 3 miles away from our apartment so while my wife and daughter take the bus, I liked to run over. I have a bit of a stubborn streak, so even though I felt stabbing pain, I managed to run 2 miles before finally shutting it down and walking the rest of the way. I resolved not to run again until race day which was about 3 1/2 weeks away.

A New Training Plan

Meanwhile, my wife was following her plan to a T, even though she missed a few days on her training plan while we were on vacation, she made up for it when we got back. I was concerned that double the speed work per week would lead to injury for her, but she managed to stay strong and healthy. To keep Lynn company on Sunday long runs, I rented a bike and pedaled by her side.

Stockholm Half Marathon Race Day

Pre-race rain, Stockholm race
Some pre-race rain

After almost a month of not running, I laced up on Saturday, September 17th determined to run the Stockholm Half Marathon with Lynn to the finish. Based on her training plan I was sure that Lynn could maintain 9 minute per mile pace. This would have her to finish around 1 hour and 58 minutes, keeping with her goal of under 2 hours. I figured I still had enough fitness to keep up with her barring further injury. In the end I did not feel any effects of the lingering achilles injury, but how did I do?

In coach mode, I suggested to Lynn that we take the first mile slightly slower than race pace and ease into the run. The plan was to run the first mile around 9:10 pace. Instead, we ran the first mile in 8:51. I was feeling great, but I worried that Lynn might be pushing too hard.

The 2nd mile we completed in 8:24, followed by 8:33. Throughout miles 2 to 7, Lynn averaged 8:28 per mile. I was worrying that she wouldn’t have enough for the 2nd half.

Somewhere in the 8th mile, volunteers were handing out bananas and Lynn started to fall behind. Ah, I thought, now it’s time to slow down, but 30 seconds later she was back by my side to tell me she just slowed down to eat. As she pushed ahead, I was impressed with her determination and conditioning and started to wonder if I could keep up.

After a steep downhill in mile 9 where Lynn raced ahead with seeming ease, I caught back up on the flat. She kept pushing at mile 10, while my legs started to feel like jelly. I encouraged her to go on without me and started to drop back. As I continued, somewhat close behind her for another half mile, but after a brief walk at a water station, I could no longer see her in the distance.

I prefer the half marathon distance to the marathon, because I never have hit the wall in the half. Usually after mile 20 in the marathon, it’s a long mental struggle of moving one foot in front of the other. In the Stockholm Half Marathon, the last couple of miles became a battle of attrition. With my wife somewhere up ahead of me, I pushed on averaging over 9-minute pace per mile over the last 5K. My achilles tendon was fine, but I just had nothing left in my legs and I felt a bit lightheaded. I worried about being caught by the 2-hour pace group. I pushed on though because I wanted to get to the finish to see how Lynn had finished.

Post-run, Stockholm Run
A proud finish to the Stockholm Half Marathon

The Results

I ended up with an official chip time of 1:55:39, and I walked through the finish area, accepting my medal and a bottled water before finding Lynn. She had done fantastic, keeping up the pace through the end to finish in 1:53:06! She had come into the race hoping to average 9:00 per mile but ended up averaging 8:38 per mile. I was extremely proud of her, and I was also glad to have finished the race without aggravating my injury. Next up for both of us is a 10K on November 5th, and I told her I’m gunning for her. Unless of course, I manage to injure myself again in the process.

We finished the Stockholm Half Marathon, Half Marathon
We finished the Stockholm Half Marathon!
Run Results, Stockholm Run
The Results!
Post Run Celebration
Post Run Celebrating

My First Half Marathon

Four weeks after successfully running my first sub-20-minute 5K and beating my younger brother in the process, on a whim, I decided to run my first half marathon. I didn’t have a training plan, and I had never run more than 8 miles before. However, I was in peak physical condition, and I was running about 20 miles per week. How hard could it be to run a 13.1-mile half marathon in a race environment?

I had been sharing my newfound love of running with my co-workers and detailing my recent success at the 5K when one of my colleagues suggested that I run a local half marathon coming up that Saturday that he had signed up for. It was a Thursday when he told me about the race and even though there was little notice and no time to prepare, the idea intrigued me. Maybe I was a long-distance runner. Even though I did not have a training plan and only two days to go before the event, I signed up right away and began to work on my racing plan.

I had not yet discovered online race predictor calculators which I’ll discuss in detail in a future post, but I did have some training baseline to consider. I had just run a 19:49 5k which at 3.1 miles meant that I had averaged 6 minutes and 24 seconds per mile. I had regular weekly mileage of about 20 to 25 miles per week on my legs, and I had just run 8 miles in 60 minutes during a hard training session which meant I had run 7 minute 30 seconds per mile over that distance. Based on these data points I figured that I should be able to run sub 8-minute miles over the duration of a half marathon. 8-minute miles over the course of 13.1 miles is just under 1 hour and 45 minutes which sounded like a nice round number and became my goal.

It turns out that my co-worker had the same time goal, so we met up on race morning in St. Charles, Illinois on June 6th, 2004, and ran together at the start. St. Charles is an affluent suburb about 40 miles west of Chicago and is situated in the Fox River valley. The course was point to point starting on the east side of St. Charles at a local mall and ended on the west side of the town on the other side of the valley. That’s right, located in a river valley, downtown St. Charles is at river level while each side of town is quite a bit higher. The elevation difference is about 100 feet or the equivalent of a ten-story building. While the first half of the race would wind down to the river, the second half would be uphill! Not an ideal situation for a first-time half marathon with little to no preparation.

As the race began, my co-worker stayed with me for about the first half mile as I settled into my pace, and he quickly fell behind. This was still before I bought my first Garmin running watch, so I only had the mile markers on the course to guide me. I don’t have a log unfortunately of my mile split times, but I do know that I managed to keep every mile under 8 minutes, and I never pushed too hard. It was my first time attempting this long of a distance, and I didn’t have super high expectations, so I really enjoyed the race and even managed to keep my speed up in the 2nd half of the race as we climbed out of the river valley. The best part of the course was that after climbing completely out of the valley around mile 12 we headed back down to the downtown area which made for a very nice and fast finishing mile.

When all was said and done, I finished in 1 hour 41 minutes and 37 seconds with an average pace of 7 minutes and 45 seconds per mile. I was ecstatic! I decided I was a long-distance runner and signed up shortly after for another half marathon scheduled for September. I found a 12-week training plan at Runner’s World and set out to get fast!