The 42.2km Running Tour of Reykjavik

Today I am so happy to bring you this guest blog post by Love Training More runner Agnes Flanagan! It’s been a total thrill for me to coach Aggie over the last year and see her set a PB at a spring half marathon and now achieve her big dream of becoming a marathoner, hand-in-hand with her best friend and fellow Love Training More runner Julia.  Aggie went into this race with everything that she needed to have a great day: she was fit, she cared about her training and had been super consistent. She had her best girl with her and she was in a beautiful place.  Read on for her beautiful result: right on goal at 4:20:51!  Congratulations Aggie!

xoxo

Erin

Reykjavik Marathon August 20^th, 2016

by Agnes Flanagan

Or as Julia named it: “The 42.2km Running Tour of Reykjavik.” What better way to end a week-long adventure in Iceland, with your bestie/ running buddy, than to run the Reykjavik Marathon!?

The night before the race, I was excited and a bit anxious. I was excited to be racing my first marathon, but also anxious about the unknown of this “first.” The city of Reykjavik was crazy busy because the following day was the race and culture night. Culture night is an annual event that takes place in Reykjavik, where people celebrate in the city streets, museums, and businesses. It marks the start of the city’s cultural year. The city was bumping. That being said, it was a bit stressful to navigate the city and find a free parking spot near our hostel. The stress lessened once we found a parking spot. We both had decent sleeps in our hostel!

Race day morning: the sun was shining; it was 15-16 degrees. This was our hottest day in Iceland since arriving but still a perfect temperature for us Canadians. There were lots of people at the start line, like around 10,000 people. It was exciting. Julia and I felt good and we were happy/ excited for this “running tour” of Reykjavik.

We weaved through local subdivisions for the first 7-8km.  We watched the locals cheer and bang their pots, pans and Quality Street chocolate tins with cooking utensils. Some groups of people cheered alongside the route and had buffets of yummy food and alcohol, demonstrating that they planned to cheer for a while.  Note that this was around 9am! We ran passed a couple live bands and along the beautiful coast. Close to the 10km mark, I noticed two women cheering and holding a Canadian flag. I yelled “yeah Canada” and they cheered even louder for us. This gave me a little extra boost.

The first 10km went by very quickly. And the next 11km felt easy as well. The route was beautiful!! It was the best feeling 21km I’ve run yet and Julia felt the same. We ran a bit faster than we had planned at the beginning (5:30/km versus 5:55/km… Sorry coach Erin!). During the first half, I tried thinking about members of my family, and friends to distract me. I didn’t want to get bored. We took a pee break at the 21km water stop and I noticed a couple with Canadian attire on. They were from Dartmouth! What a small world.

After this point in the race, the “easy” was coming to an end. Coach Erin told us this point would come. For the next few kilometers we ran through a beautiful park. Shortly after the water stop, I heard a “bahhh” from a nearby bush, which must have been a sheep who was obviously cheering us on. Only in Iceland would you hear a sheep cheering you on.

Whenever I felt my negative thoughts creeping up on me, I would tell myself: “Agnes, there is no need to start thinking about how many more kms you have to go, you’re fine, keep going and don’t think about it until you reach the 32km mark, you’ve got this”. Nearing 30km, I neeeeded water and there wasn’t going to be another stop for 2km. Luckily, there was a restaurant alongside the course and they had a patio full of people. I was so desperate that I ran to it asked if anyone had water. A woman offered (what looked like) fancy water she had bought, and she generously gave us two glasses.

Once we finally got to the water stop near 31km, I felt dizzy: uh-oh. This was concerning given I still had 13km left to go. This has happened in my most recent half marathon. I drank 3 waters and 1 Powerade at this stop. I felt the need to stop and sit down. We probably stopped for a couple minutes. When we started up our running again, we pulled the reins a bit and slowed our pace. Miracle! In a couple kilometers I was feeling good again, no more dizziness. Wooooo! I was pumped. From then on, I took 3 water and 1 Powerade at each water stop. I was afraid this would be too much liquid but it was exactly what I needed.

At this point, I had to change the music playlist to my oldies. This playlist and Julia are is what got me through. The songs distracted me and I sang along to them while I ran. That being said, the kilometers still went by slowly as our distance increased. Overall though, we felt OK. The route was generally flat with small-medium sized hills. My mantra during the second half of the race whenever I was getting annoyed at the hills, I told myself “Nova Scotia hills”. This worked every time. The hills in Iceland were quite small (unnoticeable really) compared to the hills we run in Halifax.

For kilometer 35-37, we ran along a black sand beach, and we continued running along the coast until 40km mark. It was beautiful.

There was a water stop at 40km and after that, we were ready to get ‘er done! We picked up our pace a bit and ran home. There were lots of people cheering at the finish line.

Julia and I crossed the finish line holding hands.

We did it.

1.5 hours after we crossed the finish line, we had to drive to the airport to catch our flight home. We were slowww moving, a bit sore, and we felt a bit out of it. Julia and I wore our medals with pride and had a glass of celebratory wine on the flight.

What a feeling!