My fastest half marathon this year, so far, was at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London. It wasn’t the flattest of courses, but it was the closest I’ve been to a sub-90 time for a while. It really has been one thing after another since the start of the pandemic back in 2020, and my race times have been severely impacted as a result. Now I’m in my 40s I realise it’s going to be more difficult to PB, or to even get within touching distance of the times I got a few years ago. That’s not going to stop me trying though.

Admittedly, today wasn’t a PB attempt, and I guess to a degree it wasn’t even about times. It was mostly an excuse to visit somewhere I’ve not been before, but would handily be a stepping stone along the path to training for my next marathon. Perhaps today I could see what I’m currently capable of, and how much more work I need to put in before I’m ready to go sub-90 again.

I was up around 07:15 for breakfast, having slept better last night with fewer trains having gone past, and we were on our way to Fælledparken where the race village was located. Having walked there once already, we knew where we were going. We could have used the Metro, but it would only have been one stop and it didn't seem worth it to save what could have been only five minutes even if it would have saved our legs a little.

The race village was incredibly busy with a very long toilet queue. I was eager to join it as early as I could, thinking that it might take the majority of the fifty minutes we’d got remaining. We dropped off our bags and then said our goodbyes until later as I joined the queue.

It got to 09:15 and Carmen messaged to say there were more toilets at the pens, and the queues were shorter. I was hesitant after having waited for so long, but I’d easily got another twenty minutes of waiting if I did nothing. Eventually I headed in the direction of the red start, not going the right way to start with as it didn't seem completely clear where to go. I’d used the loos there with five minutes to spare, and hurriedly made my way over to the red pen - jogging as the countdown of the race had begun with 40 seconds to go.

The race started just before I reached the pen, but this pen hadn’t yet started moving so I found a spot to stand and joined it as soon as I could. I was a little further forward than I wanted to be, so held back as much as I could to try and let the 1:30 pacer get ahead of me, but didn’t quite manage that.

Within the first mile the route past the store where we'd got bakery items from the day before, and then the main entrance to the park. Later in the race everyone would be on the other side of the road for the final 600 metres. For now though there were many more miles to do. For the first seven miles I did between 06:43 and 06:53 depending upon what the conditions allowed, and what I felt I could do. This wasn't what I intended, the pace felt fine for the most part; but of course it did, as it was still early.

The sun was warm, and the road was crowded with so many runners. Even after a mile these didn’t thin out, and neither did the crowds of spectators - it felt like a better supported half marathon than any I’ve done before. I guess most of the 29,000 runners today had people there specifically for supporting them. The atmosphere felt like running the London Marathon.

The second mile ended around Kastellet, and so far everything was pretty familiar, whilst the third and fourth mile went close to Nyhavn along roads we’d taken back from there yesterday. The realisation of where this part of the race was made it nice to see some places around there from a different angle. It made it feel familiar yet different at the same time.

At the first water station there were signs warning they were coming up, and then there were the elite water bottles, a water hose, and then the cups of water and energy drinks. I hesitated before trying to move across, but struggled to get there until the water had passed. I saw another sign for water so I grabbed a cup after the energy drinks, but it turned out that too was an energy drink so discarded it after one sip. I hoped it wouldn't upset my stomach like some had during the Robin Hood marathon quite a few years ago. It was a mistake, but within a mile I'd forgotten about it.

My main thought was "keeping going" - I wanted to try to run for longer than I had during the Big Half, and was breaking it down into small chunks. The first step was getting to 4 miles, if I could do that then I just needed to reach five miles and that would be enough, but really I wanted to do at least 10K without walking, or even half of the course. So far, so good.

During the fourth mile it passed the Spar we’d gotten ice cream from, and then looped round onto the next street that we’d seen already as well. It felt like we’d recced the route ahead of time, but anything we’d seen was unintentional and only a by-product of having visited a couple of the sights already.

At mile 5 it passed Nyhavn again, and I tried to peer across to the other side of the road to see if there was any chance Carmen could be there. Thinking back though, I realised it would have been people doing mile 4, and that wouldn’t have been a big enough gap if she’d started not that long after me. I’d not yet seen an alert on my watch to say she’d crossed 5K anyway.

After that the course goes under a bridge that leads to Amager, and continues past many modern buildings. I was starting to feel like I wouldn’t keep this up much longer so eased off a little, and was determined I would at least get to 6 miles. When I reached that, I was then determined to reach 10K.

I could then see the rides at Tivoli Gardens, and thought of how much of a tourist trap it sounds like. It costs to enter, and then costs extra to go on any of the rides there. It didn’t really interest me.

The town hall was around here as well though, and that did look like a nice building, and one I thought would be worth coming back to photograph on a run at some point. For now though, I was still running somehow, and didn’t want to stop until I had to. I did wonder why Thai Airlines was being advertised on a building here though. It wasn't the first time I'd seen an airline on this run, but the other one had made more sense. Early on I'd passed the SAS offices, just as they were cheering someone running in full SAS uniform.

I got to 7 miles, and it wasn’t long after that I decided I’d had enough and started to walk. I'd gotten over halfway without walking, so that was something. I got to the water station on the cobblestones and was glad I’d taken it easy over them as there were so many discarded cups of water on the floor here and I wondered what it would have been like to have run on them at speed, or what it would be like after a few thousand more runners had been through here. Would they have been as slippery as I’d imagined? I was maybe half a metre from the table of water cups, but was shoulder barged out the way by another runner. He then reached for a cup and knocked over an entire row of about cups before finally picking one up from the next batch. Fortunately, I hadn’t yet started running again so it didn't affect me at all, and just took my time getting one. I figured this may have been his first experience of getting water during a race and wasn't too sure of it.

I got running again for maybe half a mile at the most, and then walked some more. The 1:30 pacer overtook me not long before this, and during this second walking period I could see them now about 0.3 miles ahead of me. I knew I needed to keep going, and decided that I must try to only walk once per mile. This got me going again for about a mile before I walked again just before reaching 9 miles. This time I lost sight of the pacer, and didn’t see them again until the finish.

I did a quick calculation in my head and figured at best I’d still have thirty minutes until the finish. It seemed like maybe I could beat my time from The Big Half. At 11 miles I checked my watch again - I’d got a little under 14 minutes to run 2.1 miles. I knew I couldn’t do that, but I realised that the faster I could do these now, the closer I’d be to the sub-90 times I’ve not done for almost two years now.

I looked behind me and could see nobody immediately behind me, so I started to walk as close to the edge as I could. When I went under a bridge another runner started shouting at me in another language and pointing to the side of the road, as if to say I shouldn’t be walking on the route.

I could soon see ahead of me the 18K marker, and a bridge across one of the lakes. Three kilometres to go. Soon I’d see the park again and then it’d be time to speed up once last time. I thought I could see a hazy smoke on the other side of the bridge but when I got there, it seemed to be gone so was unsure what it was.

This was then a long straight towards Østerport. Just before I got to the PureGym gantry with the music playing on stage, I saw another runner almost get knocked over as they were run into from behind. The entire course was great though, well supported, and whilst still very busy this far into the race, this far forward, it’d been a good, friendly race. A few incidents like this I’d either seen or experienced certainly didn’t impact my view of the day.

It was a relief to see the 20K sign, and I thought maybe I’d run now until the finish, but couldn’t really. I walked a few more times, and one of those was a little after the “600m to go” sign, when I realised that was a little too early to speed up. I wanted to stay ahead of the runner with a child on his shoulders though.

When I saw the “200m to go” sign, someone sprinted past me so I decided this was the time to speed up, and speeded up towards the finish line as quickly as I could accelerate at this point.

I finished in position 3,986 out of 27,929 finishers (the first 21%) with a time of 1:33:41. In the end this was my fastest half marathon this year so far, by just five seconds. It’d been a warm day, but I think it was a successful day - it shows that perhaps I’m slowly getting there in my journey to being ready for the Larnaca marathon. A relief considering I’ll now be doing a marathon in Rwanda next May.

At the finish it’s then a walk through the trees, with no real funnel, to where you collect your finishers medal, then some water, a banana, and if you want them there’s also a bar of some sort (I didn’t bother with), and beer which I also didn’t bother with.

After analysing the village map twice, I found my way to the medal engraving and got that done for 75 DKK using Apple Pay (which again would mean a conversion fee later from the bank). I collected my drop bag, and then laid on the grass for a while. I figured I’d got thirty minutes until Carmen finished.

When I checked up on her I saw she’d not yet reached 10K, and that made no sense. I wondered if something had happened; had her hip played up and she’s had to walk or pull out? I then saw her start time, and realised she’d started around fifty minutes after me which meant there’d be some time yet.

After a while I decided I could find somewhere to cheer Carmen on from. I thought maybe the 20K mark or somewhere nearer, as it wouldn’t take long for me to get into the race village from there to meet her at the bag drop as planned. It was a bit busy though so I checked the live tracking, and thought I could perhaps see her just after 18K, on the bridge over the lake. As I got closer I could see it was going to be tight, so I started to jog a little until I reached the road on the bridge. Seconds later I spotted Carmen’s visor, so quickly reached for my phone to take a picture, but by the time I looked up she was gone. She was going faster than the tracking had predicted, and flying round this course! I checked the times and the map and could see she was maybe 10-20 seconds ahead of where it thought she’d be.

My next chance to see her would be maybe 19K, but I decided rather than risk that I should head straight to 20K as then I wouldn’t need to run the entire way. I settled into even periods of running and walking. As I was leaving the path to head up to the road across the end of the lake I got the notification she’d passed 20K. I’d got maybe twenty seconds to find a spot to cheer her on from. I found one, got my phone out and the camera on ready, and waited.

I managed to cheer her on, and then made my way into Fælledparken so I could find her in the race village after she finished. I’d got to around the area where parkrun had started when I got the message she’d finished in around 2 hours. I wasn’t sure if this was a PB or not; I thought it might be but couldn’t be sure as I remembered it's somewhere around that mark. As I made my way to the finish area we started to message so we could locate each other, and I spotter her as she left the finishers area. She’d missed out on sub-2 hours by just 42 seconds, but still got her third fastest half marathon on a busy course in heat that would have impacted most people’s speed anyway. She’d done good!

With both of us pleased with our results, we headed out of the park after she’d collected her bag too. We took the underpass located near the lake, and this came out on a road on the other side of the runners. We found a newsagent, and Carmen bought us both Cornetto ice creams to eat on our way back to the apartment. There was one further stop at the supermarket next to the station so we could buy some food for an evening meal.

We relaxed for the remainder of the day, so our legs could recover from what we’d put them through. We’d thought perhaps we could have gone downstairs to the restaurant for the evening meal, but we found out they close on Sundays. Carmen had bought us some frozen burgers for 35 DKK earlier, so we used those instead which meant the meal was a big saving from eating out.