Surprised by Helsinki

Helsinki is a cool place. Not literally cool – well, that too, but at least not on this marathon weekend. We had 20 degrees Celsius, which for me is far too hot to do a good time. The more surprising it was, that I actually did do a pretty solid time: 3:31:35. Which puts this run into the top 20% of my fastest marathons. Since I recently became an associated member of the 100 Marathons Club, I know this whole number stuff. As part of the vetting process I had to hand in an orderly record of all my marathon races in form of an Excel table, which means – ta ta! – I can now easily sort and filter and bore you with numbers. Helsinki is my 9th fastest out of 49 regular 26.2 miles races or 41 regular 26.2 road races, if you don’t include the trails. My total marathon race count is now 52, including the three races above 26.2 miles. I am getting carried away, back to Helsinki. Initially I hoped that my YouTube skill would have developed to a point that I can post my first marathon video. But I found while doing running videos is fun, it also takes my focus off the actual running. My head is full of what to shoot and getting the kit ready and fixing things when it does not work as expected. I identified all this distraction as the reason why I fell-over twice during my last YouTube run, so I paused making these clips and traditional writing with pictures must do for the moment.Helsinki is a great place to visit. I had no expectations, apart from being somehow in Scandinavia, which would have meant Scandinavian lifestyle, architecture and design. The first surprise was when I arrived at the train station and I heard an announcement for the next service to St. Petersburg, Russia. Yes, I was aware that there is a land border between both countries, but I did not expect trains to be announced and Helsinki looking so – ehm – socialistic (if that’s a word). I felt quite a bit of Russian influence, which made the place more exotic than I thought it would be. The second surprise was how much the city felt like it is built into and merging with nature. Trees, lakes and water everywhere. The sent of pines and grass and seaside made me often forget that I am in an European capital. The third surprise: Even though the marathon route passed a lot of water and foresty bits there was a bigger than fair share of running along traffic and the exhaust fumes that come with it. So you did feel like running in a city after all, unfortunately for the wrong reasons. Apart from that the event was very much fun. The Finnish are good natured and managed to organise a very friendly event. They made international runners feel especially welcome and participating Russian runners got an extra applause at the start line, which again seemed to show the strong bond between these two countries. And then there was the finish in the Olympic stadium from 1952. Finishes in Olympic stadiums always give me a buzz and it was no different here. Once I crossed the finish line and got the medal, I received the best post marathon goody bag ever: ice-cream, tasty recovery shakes, beer (non-alcoholic though), vegan oat-smoothy mixes, chocolate bars and more. The evening sun still felt strong and warming (it was 6:30pm, the start had been at 3pm) and it made you want to linger around at the stadium, rest your legs on the (artificial) grass gorging on the earned goodies. Lying in the sun at 7pm, with beer and nice food was not how I expected this race to end. Helsinki turned out to be full of surprises, most of them nice ones.