Saturday June 14 saw the second running of the uphill running race Grefsenkollen Opp, and since I was not able to get down to Gothenburg for Gothenburg Triathlon I decided to have a go at this race. Not least because the start is only a 10 minute walk from my home. The race course begins in a park and follows local roads to the top of Grefsenkollen, a popular local hilltop from which to gaze down upon the city of Oslo and Oslofjord. The race course is only 4.5km long and rises 270 metres in altitude to 379moh.
In the male 40-44 age group I was one of 29.
The great thing about a local race is that you can just get changed at home, jog to the start line to warm up and then race. And then jog home again. A few minutes after two o’clock the race started and off I went somewhere in the middle of the pack. I find that at all these races involving several hundred of people there is a mad dash from the line to start with before things settle down. I like to start things a little easy and get into the swing of things before cranking up the pace to a hard sustainable tempo. This also suits me as I like picking my fellow racers off rather than being hunted down myself. Anyway, I can understand the potential race winners going off hard, firstly to get clear of the pack which could slow them down but also because a number of runners like to open up a gap between them and their competitors as they feel that the extra energy they use in doing so is rewarded by giving them a greater advantage both psychologically and physically than the cost to them.
I was probably a little over half way down the pack and as the course narrowed from the grass field on which we started to the narrow tarmacadam path that led up to the road we had to slow due to the weight of runners in a narrow space. In total though I wouldn’t have thought that I lot much more than ten seconds there.
So, there was I and 277 other runners running up a hill. A girl was directly in front of me as things began to settle down and the field had gotten stretched out. She looked like she could run a bit and was running a good pace for me, so I fell in behind her and used her as a pace maker for a few minutes. A kilometre up the road the hill became a little steeper and I increased my effort a little and left the small group I was with and started to work on coming up to the next group that was about 30 metres ahead of me. I kept checking my watch, and my heart rate was hovering around 170 or so, but I felt that I could continue like that for another 10 minutes or so. I reached the group ahead, but as I tried to push on passed them I realized that the effort of catching them had cost too much and I had to drop back a few metres for the next minute or two before pushing harder again.
That's me in the blue
By now we were passed the halfway stage and the runners were beginning to find out whether they had been going too hard or whether indeed they had more in them than the early pace they had chosen. There was more forward and backward movement in the field, but generally most runners including me continued at the pace they had settled on. I passed a few more people. One or two people passed me, and after the third km mark I was really beginning to pant for breath, but pressed on nevertheless.
Running hard with 1km to go
The 4km mark came up and I was beginning to feel that it would be so much easier if I just stopped running and walked to the top instead. Of course I didn’t do that, and finally the 200 metre mark came up and I tried to put everything I had left in an effort to catch the group of 5 or 6 runners that were only 10 metres ahead of me. But they must all have been putting in a similar effort and I just couldn’t close on them except for one that dropped back toward me but still managed to cross the line two or three metres ahead of me.
And then I crossed the line gasping for air. I hit the stop button on my watch. It said 22:38, almost one minute quicker than my only training run up the same course a month previously, so I was pretty pleased. I was 14 in my class of 29 runners, so I came in the top half. And only 9 women beat me, which only goes to show that women do have a physical disadvantage when it comes to racing.
At the top of the hill is a small car park and a restaurant. The car park was already ready pretty crowded with runners and various other people as I arrived, and it continued to fill up with hot, exhausted, excited athletes. I grabbed a cup of water and a cup of sports drink, took a carton of orange juice from a pallet, which was my reward for such an effort and jogged home.
I was home a little over an hour after I had left, just as if I had been out for my regular running training, but I still had my race number proudly pinned to my chest.
