Hedvig, my oldest daughter, runs with me through the goal in Stockholm Marathon.

Today it´s five days since I run my first marathon. I promised to give you a litter more detailed report of the run and here it comes.

But first I would like to thank all people that supported and greeted me. My wife and my three children were waiting along the race and cheered me two times during the race and at the finish at Stockholm Stadion. They showed great endurance in waiting for me along the raoad, and their smiling faces filled me with new energy every time I passed by. Also my oldest brother and my yongest brother-in-law came to see me, which made me happy.

As I´ve told I live streamed reports during the race and this was widely acclaimed among my colleagues at Svenska Dagbladet and other people that follow me on the net. I used Bambuser with a Nokia N95 with standard headset cable attached to my t-shirt, with you can see at the image above. In the beginning there was no problem reporting this way since the pace was quite slow. But at the end when I was really tired I felt that even small reports drained me from energy.

Here you can see my times during the race:

As you can see I kept a quite even pace throughout the race. My half marathon time is almost exactly half of the full time. I tried to keep my own pace and only in the beginning I had some problem to know what was the right pace for me. As you can se above, between 21 and 25 km I run at my fastest pace. At that time I was running on the second lap at Djurgården, a part of the track that was longer than I expected, so that was mentally a tough part of the course. Until then everything had went on very fast. There was lot of people along the cource to look at the marathon and there was a great atmosphere along the race. 

But after 30 km everything felt much worse. I was really tired and started to think abouth wether I would fulfill the race. I slowed down the pace and tried to do km for km. It was a hot and sunny day, about 28°C and I had to drink a lot. At this time, my goal of 4,30 started to fade away. Then on the last 2 km my brother-in-law met me and run along with me, wow what a boost. And then at the last curve my daughter run along with me over the finishing line. With her help I could put on a spurt to finish six seconds below 4,30.

Still I haven´t decided wether to run another marathon. If so I need to exercise much more before, because I would like to, and I think I have the capacity of, beating my time from this year: 4,29.54.

Thank you all my family and friends for support during the race. A longer report will be posted tomorrow.

Kevin Wilhelmsen and I at Östermalms IP, just after we have recieced our number bibs.

One day left: Today our Danish friends, Kevin Wilhelmsen, and his family arrived to Stockholm. I am happy to spend this day and the hours before the race together with an experienced runner. Hes goal is to run at 3,40, so we won´t be able to run together tomorrow.

This evening we received our number bibs and I bought a cap, unfortunately black. But it will be about 23° tomorrow so I need one.

If you like to follow my run, pease visit: http://bambuser.com/channel/svd/, where I will broadcast reports from during the race. Wish me good luck!

So now my training season is finished. Here is what I have completed since I started back in december.

• Cycling: 1040 km
• Running: 493,7 km

Saturday will be my examination. Yesterday my colleague told me he had run Stockholm Marathon at 4:24. So my goal now is 4:23.

Old vs new. You can see the hole where the upper part meets the sole at the old one.

Five days left: I was in doubt for a long time wether to by new shoes or not. To by new ones to close to the race was out of my mind until I asked a question at the runners forum at jogg.se. Most of the experienced runners told me that a few sessions was enough to get used to new shoes. Yet I hesitated and in the weekend I suddenly realised a hole in my about two years old pair of shoes. Then there was an immediate need for buying new ones.

Today I found a pair of Nike Air Zoom Vomero +3 at a reduced price. Now they are mine and I’m wearing them right now when writing. They are very comfortable and on Wednesday I will run about 10 km to find out if they will fit for the marathon.

Seven kg less of me must give me some extra energy for running at saturday. Today I found a calculator that tells me I will gain 315 kcal from this weight loss. 315 kcal is as much energy as 1,5 Maxim energy bar. I am not a physician to really understand how this will gain me in the end. Lets se on saturday.

If you like to know more about the discussion about energy spending while running, here’s a forum thread from jogg.se.

I’ve also decided to stream reports from the run via bambuser, which I will do as a part of the Marathon-project at SvD.se. Read more about it here (unfortunately only in Swedish).

Summary of my training this week (May 18-24):

• Biking: 3 x 2 x 10 = 60 km
• Running: 23/5, 12,22 km.

A big challenge this week is that I need to by new shoes, and I can’t do it until Tuesday. I will run and walk with them as much as I can but if the don´t feel smooth enough I have to use my old ones. Recently I discovered a hole close to the sole, so I really hope they can survive 42 km.

This weeks summary:

• Biking: 3 x 2 x 10 + 10 = 70 km
• Running: Wed 13/5 12,2 km, Sun 17/5 30,64 km.

None of the last running sessions were mesaured with my Nikeplus since I the chip on the shoe has fallen off and I don´t know where.

I´m thinking of byuing new shoes for my marathon. But I hesitated since I thought it will be to late. Today I get some good answers from more experienced runners at the runners forum at jogg.se (unfortunately only in Swedish). Almost all of the answers tell that it won´t be any problem. I will be able to get used to new shoes in the time remaining until start.