Important factor in running - how you feel about it, HCR 2014

Specsavers Helsinki City Run 10.5.2014

 

The most favourite half marathon event in Finland, the Helsinki City Run has been held once again. I had big hopes and major goals for this years HCR-run, how did it go?

There are bad news and there are good news. In the movies and tv-series, they always start with the good news. This year HCR was so surprisingly positive as a event, so let's leave the good news as last and start off with the bad news.

Bad news...

There are many factors that affect your running: Training, eating properly, sleeping enough, your set goals, how fit you are, avoiding injuries, correctrunning techniques and what matters the most - how you feel about it. If you don't have great feeling "everything will go perfectly 110% today!", then you can expect everything to go as planned.

I haven't had feeling like that for awhile, well particularly for HCR. That might have affected the outcome of my run. Last year, around December, I was high in spirits and was looking forward to breaking my personal records big time. I even dared to challenge one of my former schools teachers and a good friend of mine to participate in the run. Both of them initially accepted the challenge and I decided to train faster harder better, so I would beat them 10-0.

Closing in on year 2014 start of the Helsinki City Run, it came clear to me, that neither of them was going to take part of this challenge after all. This might have affected on my feelings for the run, but there were other reasons aswell. Bad preparing, eating badly and not enough proper training. Excuses one could find endlesly, but in the end you have to man up and look into the mirror and find the reason why the race went as it did. No excuses. Let's leave them to the policians.

Year 2014 Helsinki City run ½marathon time for me was 2hours,04minutes. Far, far from my goal of 1hour45minutes.  As I laid there on the Olympic Stadiums grassfield, I just thought of many things. Many things. Some of them aren't fit enough to be written on a blog with all age people reading

The sight as I was laying on the field...

Luckily for me, human learn from mistakes. That should hold true for me aswell. Learning for this, I need to start working towards the next marathon and make it even better. No excuses. That's my new motto. Run like you've never ran before. The most important thing is that you finish what you start. The worst thing possible you could do, is to quit without proper reason (like injury)!

Thumbs up for next years City Run!

 I have around one month for my next marathon. Let's see how I do there.

My socks unsigned their contract.

 Then the good, positive sides of Specsavers Helsinki City Run 2014

Ok, so I wanted to leave the good side of the event as last. There were many, many good things about the running event to tell about.

The starting groups: HCR took advices from other internation running events and organized more starting groups for this year HCR. There were more than ten thousand runners expected to participate on this event, so the smooth start of the run was needed. This was done very good this year. Everyone seemed to think so. Even I enjoyed this years start.

Helsinki Cityrun 2014 official race shirt was orange-coloured.

 The race route was correct lenght this year. At least it felt a bit longer :D - last year it was missing a good few hundread meters. So techniculy I ran my full-lenght first HCR half marathon this year. The route was challenging enough, beautiful landscapes. The last few kilometer uphills were quite pain for the legs though...

The supporters along the running route was magnificent as always. The weather wasn't the best, but people were cheering like it was a hot summer day. This is veryimportant factor for runners to keep going.

Finishing line and last service point after finishing was organized differently this year. It's good to see the organizes listen to feedback and do properly things. The servicepoint in the goal was working like a dream and no major queues for the bananas etc. was in sight this year - unlike last year, which took 15 minutes to get your final drinks/foods.

My item storage bag and goodies I received after finishing the race.

 The item storage was done differently this year also. We were handed out green sailor bags, which we just put our running number sticker and put our stuff inside the bag. Then we gave the bags to a certain fenced area. There was security to keep the bags in place and it worked really well. Previously we just  have had to leave our stuff laying on the benches inside olympic stadium, which did give some excitement, as would you get your stuff back. So this years fenced solution worked really, really good.

Item storage place. Items were put in bags, which was given to the officials.

 This blog post was a bit lenghty, going from emotional whining to happiness of enjoyable running event, but that's how it goes sometimes. Now I just need to get my focus back and continue to train. Next year I will get under 1hour 45minutes in HCR!

This year Helsinki City Run was 10/10. I recommend to participate if you haven't before.

Helsinki City Run 2014 Medal

Kulta Katriina offered free coffee! Yes!

 What about my lovelyreaders, have you participated in HCR before? Was this your first time, How did your run go?

Season starts in Espoo...

Summer is just around the corner and running season has officially started.

27.4.2014, My first Länsiväylä run, in Espoo.

The running event is called "the start of finnish running season" and it certainly had quite a few participants. I also saw few finnish politics either running or campaigning for euro elections.

Grumpy Janne before the race. I forgot my water bottle somewhere, so had to purchase something to drink...

This time I started the season with a quick run, only 6 kilometers run, but it was enough for me. At least for now, as they say - you get more hungry, the more you eat ;) Time was around 30 minutes, I didn't enter to run competively anyways. I was with a friend who just started the running hobby. So I tried to run around the same time. Well that didn't really work and in the end we went separate ways :D.

Maybe next time I just say "see you at the finishing line!"

Overall Länsiväylä juoksu (run) was organized really well, there were signs everywhere at the starting location for WC, where to get running bibs, etc. Definately will try to participate next year also.

The weather was also great. Sun was shining, so hopefuly people remembered to take care of their suplements and that they drank enough water!

I read that the 6 kilometer race was also re-modeled from last year and this year the route was different. I'm not sure how was it previously, but I enjoyed this years route. It was definetely a great 6 kilometers to run.

Finisher with a medal, sun is shining and everything is good!

I've also started going to gym more frequently and I even have a personal trainer. I will tell you about this more in a later blog post.

Have you already started your running season?

SnowRunFest 2014

Fun, Entertaining, SnowRunFest. - Short description of the hottest, different, running event of the winter. 

(my most sincere apology for the long and detailed posting in advance)

When I heard about the original "mudrun 2013" running event, I knew that was going to be entertaining and I just had to participate on it. Unfortunately the time and location didn't fit into my timeschedule and the best I could do was to watch the event from pictures posted on the event site.

Luckily enough, the organisation who made the mudrun 2013, came up with an idea to make a tour of "different kind of running events" - colour run, mudrun and the latest I participated on, the SnowRunFest. The location and time fit me perfectly so there was no hesitation to hook up and participate on the most intresting winter event -ever?

First SnowRunFest running event February 8th, 2014

The hype for this was big. The marketing team of the funrun.fi organisation made sure people got hyped of the event before it even happened. I was rather sceptical at start, how this could be the best event ever, with bad weather and not that much snow on the ground... Luckily I was proven wrong by the event. It was simply awesome.

The event was held in Hietsu (it's a famous beach), in Helsinki. Getting to the location was easy, since there was tons of participants and following people with the event hat/ running shoes on was made easy. My mapping skill is kind of bad, so I just joined the line of runners and followed them to the event place.

Closing in on the event place

Closing in on the event place, you could hear the music already being played by maybe the best DJ's in the world (:D) DJ's were part of radio station energy Finland (NRJ) staff. My initial first thought was "hey, the party is on!" There was this large event stage, which we saw from miles away. Nice!

Party stage was visible from miles away

Group 5

Me and my friend (later known as bunny) had signed up for running group 5, so we had time to check around the event area. There was lots of intresting sights to see, mainly the awesome carneval costumes the other runners were having on. The whole event got this really awesome feeling to it, with everyone putting effort into what they wear. I didn't dress up that nicely, just had a penguin hat on as my helm. If I knew there were this many "cosplayers", I would have purchased some digimon suit or autobot suit to wear. There was also people from Finnish fitness gym called Fressi warming people up all the time, while music was playing on the stage.

Fressi warming people up, while DJ from NRJ playing music

 Time to run!

There were a total of eight different obstacles. The lenght of the running course was 2,5 kilometers, which would be run twice. So in total of 5 kilometer, with obstacles passed twice. If you couldn't pass some obstacle, you could pass it by going around it. Which was nice.

I'll shortly describe the obstacles: there was snowhills, sumo wrestlers (which on the first lap was rather disapointing, with the mass start they were quickly passed. Though it was rather hilarious that some runners started to scream. So surprised they were of them!), then there was big slide, which you had to climb on top of with ropes (I kinda injured myself on the first slide haha), then there was sea of coloured balls which was fun. More climbing obstacles and stuff.  Oh and then there was a tunnel which you had to crawl from under. Fun!

One of the obstacles, this giant slide which looked like a lion from far away, but turned in to a lamb when we go closer.

While it doesn't seem that long of a lenght to run, it really gave a nice sweat. I liked the course. I would have probably enjoyed it more, but my bunny decided that it was going too slow and we moved our pace quite a lot. Young people have too much energy, hard to keep up with them!

Entering the finishing line

Unfortunately like everything fun, there has to be an end somewhere and our run was finishing it's two laps. Me and my bunny entered the finishing line and the medals for participating was given to us. Yay, this years first medals!

Me and my Bunny after finishing the run

SnowRunFest 2014 medal

If I had to give feedback about SnowRunFest, I'd say it was one of the best running events I have had the luxury to join (well, participate at). The course was lighted up in disco theme, which gave it's own touch. Music was loud enough, so the runners would hear it, obstacles were hard enough and people gave their own touch by having most awesome costumes ever!

Awesome costumes. Teletabbies "Let's hug, again again!"

TLDR (too long didn't read): It was awesome!

Now time to go party some, while the DJ's still playing music. After that it's time to go change clothes and start moving towards Tiger nightclub, where the afterparties were supposed to happen!