If I was to mention the World Marathon Majors, it’s a running race series you’ve potentially heard of. A newer one that less people are aware of are the Super Halfs; a series of half marathons across Europe. It’s a distance that is more achievable for many, and for European travellers is far more affordable than trips across the pond to the USA, or to Japan. This series started off as a quintet consisting of Cardiff, Copenhagen, Lisbon, Prague, and Valencia. This was expanded in 2024 to include a sixth: Berlin.

All of these races are World Athletics (IAAF) World Championship courses that have at some point held a world record performance. All we needed to do was register on their site to get a Super Halfs passport number, and this could then be used when registering to link our performances to it. Once our digital passport is complete we’d then be eligible for a special medal that shows we’ve completed the series.

Carmen introduced me to this race series, and we started off our journey to completing the set by entering the Cardiff Half Marathon, and formed a plan for when we could do each of the other races in this series. With her fortieth birthday looming she was keen on getting all, or at least most, of them done before then. It was certainly fine with me, it’d be an excuse to see some more European cities which I’ve missed during my numerous years of travelling around the world. With a target now in place, it made sense to try and get Copenhagen done in the same year as Cardiff, and to try to do at least two a year in the years that follow.

Neither of us had been to Copenhagen before, or anywhere in Denmark for that matter, so some tourism felt like a necessity too. As any runner would, I’m sure, we had a look at what parkruns were on in Copenhagen so we could consider trying to get to one of them to at least volunteer - preferably as a tail walker so it’d count as a parkrun, and a parkrun volunteering credit. I thought two days of sightseeing after the race would be enough, but hadn’t considered that Carmen would be keen on seeing the birthplace of LEGO as well.

The famous LEGO house is in Billund, which is not as straightforward to get to as you might think. We’d got two options to get there: take two coaches, or take a train and a coach. In both cases it would mean a change in Vejle, but taking the train most of the way there would be slightly faster and hopefully a little more relaxing. Coach tickets go on sale about six months before and are priced at around £11.99 per person, and train tickets are about two to three months in advance. The coach times from Copenhagen to Vejle were no good however, so this meant taking expensive trains instead.

DSB offers several types of tickets outside of rush hour. A standard ticket would be flexible, and refundable, at a cost of 902 DKK (~£100) for the two of us in one direction. By going with their Orange tickets, they wouldn’t be flexible or refundable, but would cost only 230 DKK (~£26) which is more affordable.

For the journey between Vejle and Billund, this would be a local bus (number 43 being the best choice) that takes less than thirty minutes, and the ticket for this would be purchasable using the DOT mobile application at the time of the journey.

By the time we’d be getting back to Copenhagen it’d be almost time for parkrun again so we decided we may as well factor in time for checking out another one of the three currently active in Copenhagen, and actually running it. So this gave us a rough outline for ten days in Denmark.

In terms of accommodation we decided to lean more towards AirBNB as this would mean more relaxed places, and it’s what I’ve used for Italy and Budapest recently so already knew how much nicer it can be. Our first attempt at booking accommodation was met with rejected bookings; one because they might be using the apartment themself sometime in September, and the other just didn’t respond. It wasn’t too much of a problem to find somewhere else, even though in the space of a month since I’d last looked there were far fewer to choose from.

Originally our second place for Copenhagen was going to be not too far from the train station. That was until a month before the trip when I got an email from AirBNB to say that our stay had been cancelled.

This reservation was cancelled due to concerns about the quality and reliability of the listing. We want you to have a great experience with Airbnb and this listing was no longer up to our standards.

Maybe in the long run it was going to work out better that it had been cancelled if there were likely to be problems with it. I’d had to look at available properties at a fairly last minute, and there was very little left and the majority were more expensive now too. Eventually I settled on a place not far from the beach used for Amager Fælled parkrun. It’d mean needing to take the metro into the city, but that’d be easy enough.

Our flights were from Heathrow, which is the most convenient airport to use when travelling from Ruislip, but not necessarily the most cost effective. Most taxi journeys to Heathrow are expensive, and car parking there is excessive, being over £150 for ten days. Whilst it’s possible to take the tube, there’s no easy route without travelling into London to then travel back out - a much slower option and would involve carrying luggage around for far longer. My preferred option was surprisingly the Uber, due to it being around 40% of the cost of parking.

Planning ahead, we were also aware of a LEGO Passport, where you can get it stamped at different LEGO stores around the world. We’d got one of these for free from the Leicester Square store in London, and would of course need to get it stamped at least once in Denmark. By keeping that with my actual passport, I could ensure it wouldn’t be lost. This also meant taking the LEGO versions of ourselves seemed like a good idea too. Beyond that I packed for a couple of runs, and what had become my standard for a city break.

The only other things to think about were currency. I’d read that they accept the Euro in most places, and when preparing for Vienna I’d exchanged extra to use for this trip as well. I’d completely forgotten that Denmark uses the Danish Krone instead. When I tried to order some, the currency exchange desk in Sainsbury’s tried to discourage me, saying she’d had people return it previously as nobody uses cash in Denmark. A couple of days after ordering some I was phoned to be told that they’d not received any as their supplier was out of stock. Before I could say anything she also added that every other local currency exchange would be in the same position as they all get their stock from the same place, with the exception of maybe Eurochange.

I researched travel money cards as they’re recommended by a popular money expert, but every single one I looked at had mostly negative reviews recently with some comments that really put me off considering them. Instead, if ordering currency from the supermarket failed, I would try again via my bank, or withdraw some once in the country. If I was to use my bank card it would be 2.95% + £0.50 for every transaction whilst there. I had to make a decision, and time was running out…