It has been a few years now that I have lived in Finland. Since I moved here I slowly started picking up my exercising habits and participated more and more races. Out of habit I kept on signing up for the same races over and over again (like Länsiväyläjuoksu, Midnight Run and others) – but now it was time for a new event!
Already a while ago a stumbled upon this Runner’s Twilight race. The race is organized by the same people as the Helsinki Half Marathon which premiered last year. This race was nicely timed ahead of the upcoming full marathon in September this year. I therefore decided to add it on this year’s race schedule just as a check to verify if my training so far had been successful.
Route
The race started at the Pirkkola sports center in the northern part of Helsinki. From there it followed Helsiniki’s central forest towards the south. Upon reaching the railroad tracks continued north-west through Huopalahti to Northern-Haaga. After a quick loop the route went on all the way to the ring road where the race turned eastwards. Past the Kaari shopping center the (first) round ended up at the Pirkkola sports center after 10km. To achieve the required 21.1km of a half-marathon an extra part was added before the whole round was repeated again a second time.
All in all a nice round, probably half of it on tarmac and the other half on gravel/nature roads.
Result
As this was only a stepping stone towards my full marathon race, I didn’t want to push myself to hard. But somehow half-way through this plan went through the window… the race was on and I finished in 1:44:04! That’s 7 minutes and 40 seconds faster than my previous PB from the 2014 Espoo Rantapuolikas… Definitely a result to be extremely happy with…