Last Sunday I ran the Copenhagen Marathon with Valentina. We managed to get there despite Eyjafjallajökull and the BA strikes. The weather was rather nice, sunny at first but not too hot, then cloudy and windy for the last hour. This was already my 3rd marathon this year, and the 10th overall.

At the beginning of the race, a barefoot runner overtook us, who happened to be none else than Barefoot Ted. Regular readers of this blog have already heard about him, as the atypical character was introduced in Born to Run. The race was generally well organised, although I could have had a bit more food at the water stations. The route was meandering quite a lot (the centre of Copenhagen is not so big), with loops and double-backs. It was rather easy to shortcut and we saw a few runners taking this opportunity.

We followed the 4:15 pacemaker until about 25km. We then slowly drifted back until 35km when Valentina woke up and pushed until the finish line of her first marathon in 4:24:33. Congratulations!

As for Copenhagen itself, it's a nice and chilled out city, but its main attraction, the Little Mermaid, was not there! She is currently on tour in Shangai for the World Expo...

Ultra easy going

PS: the Vienna Marathon will offer 50% off on 2011 registrations to international runners who couldn't travel because of Eyjafjallajökull.