A journey of love
Karin and I became an item in 2003, and we have since become a happily married couple. Although Karin doesn’t enjoy travel as much as I do, we have been on some trips together, and I have also managed to get her to join me in connection with the marathon. Our first trip together was to Stockholm.
I had heard good things about the Stockholm Marathon from many sources, so the run had been on my wish list for some time. A further incentive was the fact that I still had not visited the Swedish capital.
A beautiful evening
On the afternoon of Friday 13th June, we left Roskilde to drive almost 700 kilometres to the Swedish capital. It was an enjoyable journey, and we took turns driving, giving ourselves plenty of time for breaks along the way.
We arrived before evening and drove straight to the School of Sport and Health Sciences, Idrottshögskolan, behind Stockholm Central Station, where start numbers and running bags could be picked up from 8 p.m. Afterwards we drove out to Ängby Camping some ten kilometres west of the city centre where we had booked a pitch from home. At that time, we made good use of our relatively new tent and sleeping bags.
The weather was really nice; it was midsummer after all. We put up the tent and lit the disposable grill we had brought with us. I still have delightful memories from that particular evening of being newly in love, sitting under the open skies in beautiful weather eating barbecue food with a glass of good red wine.
A “Gammel Dansk” to start race day
Saturday was race day, and rather unusually we were not to run in the morning, since the race did not start until 2 p.m. We didn’t have to get up at any specific time, though we did awake fresh and relaxed early in the morning.
We went to get breakfast rolls and had breakfast in the open. Because I have never been a “righteous” runner, we also enjoyed a Gammel Dansk with our morning coffee. That was probably the only time I ever started race day with the morning bitters.
Late morning, we walked to the nearest station and travelled by Stockholms Lokaltrafik to the city centre and the start area. It’s never difficult to find the start of an urban marathon; you just go with the flow.
The run began at 2 p.m., and I kissed Karin goodbye. She would spend the next few hours exploring Stockholm. I would be doing so too, although from a rather different angle.
Stockholm Marathon
The Stockholm Marathon started a year before its Copenhagen sister in 1979 with 2,175 runners signed up. It had gradually grown to embrace about 15,000 runners, making it Scandinavia’s biggest marathon.
The run is also described as one of the world’s most beautiful marathons, and some of the hilly terrain was a half-marathon route we would run twice. The start was at the Olympic Stadium built in 1912, through leafy Djurgården, along the harbourfront towards the centre of the city, past the Palace and Gamla Stan to a much feared 34-metre ascent onto the West Bridge across the harbour. There was a fantastic view of Stockholm from the middle of the bridge after which there was another steep downward slope towards the start. The route was completely cut off from all the traffic, most of it along wide streets with plenty of room for both runners and spectators.
A fantastic feeling
It was a lovely race, just as I had been told, and good weather and masses of spectators made it an even greater pleasure.
Having learned from bitter experience four weeks earlier in Copenhagen, I refrained from setting out too fast and ended up with an overall time of 4:29:50. I ran the second round in 2:10:38. Quite unusually, I was faster in the second half of the run this time.
Mostafa Errebbah, who had won in Copenhagen, was also running here. It is no exaggeration to say that he was steadfast; he ran this race 27 seconds faster than the one he ran a month earlier. However, he was no match for the Kenyan Josphat Chemjor, who won the marathon in 2:18:14.
I found crossing the line at the historic stadium really special. The year before, I had seen large stadiums in Europe – Camp Nou in Barcelona had been particularly impressive. Stockholm’s Olympic Stadium was of an entirely different calibre. It was small, dated and outmoded, but on the other hand it had indescribable charm. As I crossed the line, I found myself thinking that the Olympic winner had done the same in 1912. Back then, the South African Ken McArthur won with a time of 2:36:54, but much had happened since then, and McArthur would only have come in 30th in this marathon 91 years later.
A wonderful experience richer
Karin met me at the finish, and that evening we had a delicious meal at a restaurant before getting another good night of sleep in the tent. Karin drove us home on Sunday after breakfast with me in the passenger seat sleeping for most of the trip. Our first journey together had been a grand success.
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