Exactly about this question was the last weekend when all of us showed up for the Finnmap fitness test. I didn’t worry too much about the whole thing, after all I just finished a half marathon and was feeling pretty good in shape. But the test results showed that apparently I was wrong. Generally the measurements showed that I should definitely continue working on my body. But may that was only because I decided to make one week of training break after the half marathon (or maybe not ). But because of these results, I was even more motivated for the afternoon where I did my first orienteering since my scout times. After 9km (which on the map looked like 6km), I was definitely hooked with this new sport, and I’m pretty sure that I will go to a few orienteering runs next year, just to give it a try.


Decided to excercise more, I started this week already on sunday with a 65km bike tour, on which I realised that 1.) autumn definitely arrived in Helsinki and 2.) I urgently have to buy me some Finland suitable biking clothing. On the search for more intense training methods I then stumbled upon intervall training and thought that I will give it a try. Which I did twice this week on my new home course. So after all this was a very successful week. While I’m still enjoying today, experimenting with Fajitas in the kitchen, there is already my first evening orienteering waiting for me tomorrow.

Today was the day, half marathon day. Preperations already started yesterday with a pre-race-sauna and continued after some nervous sleep this morning with the traditional spaghetti carbo loading (should one still do that today?). As the start of the run was quite easy for me to reach by bus, I still had plenty of time for some warm-up and to prepare myself mentally for the run. Finally at 13:15 the race started.

After just a few meters, I was trapped within the other runners, and soon I realised that I had gone over my marathon puls. But because I was fealing great I didn’t worry too much, which come back at me around marker 13. The big collapse came at kilometer 18.8 where I hit the wall and had to switch to walking for a while… Anyways, I reached the end and with an endtime of 2:04:56 I’m quite happy. Even though the 2hr limit still stays to be beaten, according to my table this should at least be a new personal best.

With much proud therefore the participants medal is now shining from my wall (where otherwise there is only my cerealbox art frames). At least some good use for these screws of the former tenant.

It has been a long time since my last half marathon. But as I had such a great experience during the Helsinki Midnight Run, I thought I will once again give it a try. After searching the internet I finally found the Pääkaupunkijuoksu (“capital city run”). Still taking place in September, this is the perfect event to end my running season before the foreign projects start again. Out of curiousity I looked up a few of the half marathons in the past and found the following list (I’m pretty sure that I did more, but these are all the results I found):

Looking at the time table I’m setting my goal for this run to be below 2 hours. At first sight, this might seem quite ambitious, but during a recent 18km Testrun, I managed to beat the pace limit of 05:40 min/km (which would be required for the 2hrs). So at the moment I’m still quite confident that I will walk away as a personal winner…