August 20, 2016 – The Reykjavik Marathon and Culture Night Festival
Dawn.
Mom wears her Eddie the Eagle inspired, “I’m Kevin’s Mom” shirt and I’m in the official TravellingFit performance tee. For days we’ve been hearing Mari Mar’s promises that she has an inflatable kangaroo that will help mark the TF cheer spots and help us runners spot the amazing folks out on the course cheering us on. But this morning, Mari Mar realized the office tea, put ol’ Skippy back In the cupboard with a tear in his throat.
Despite her best efforts, and a lot of tape, Skippy’s tracheotomy didn’t seem to be working and no matter how much hot air we all contributed to the poor ol’ Roo, he just couldn’t help looking deflated.
We walked over to the other hotel to pick up the rest of our runners. Many of us were in the TF teal and white and I couldn’t help but feeling a bit of Aussie pride in being s part of this team. A short walk around the corner and we were at the Borg. Throughout the week I had heard the name but always thought I misunderstood. Was this actually a Star Trek collective sleep chamber hive?
Same name, different concept.
A group shot outside the park shows the team spirit. The majority are Australian, a few kiwi New Zealand and three hearty Yanks. I will always love Boston based Marathon Tours. And the Danish Albatros Adventures puts on some of my favorite exotic locale races. But today I was very privileged and proud to run with TravellingFit in their inaugural “Run the World” reunion event. Mari Mar got Mom and me TF shirts that didn’t have Australia printed on them… But for the next 42k I would happily reply to any cheer of “Aussie Aussie Aussie!” with “Oi, Oi, Oi!”
An even shorter walk around another corner brought us to the start line. One of the best perks of booking with a tour operator is the location of one’s hotels. It was incredibly convenient to be so close, enabling us to stroll up twenty minutes before the gun and be right in the middle of things. Equally and perhaps exceedingly convenient is when the finish line is the same spot, thus the walk back for a shower is minimal.
I was a little disappointed in the final countdown to race start. There was that air of anticipation, some last minute Icelandic announcements quickly translated into English. But there was no Icelandic National Anthem to officially get things started. Maybe that’s not something done in Europe. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what the Icelandic Anthem sounded like so I was kinda looking forward to hearing it. I imagined it was similar to the Viking song my brother and Brandon O helped compose many moons ago:
We have returned from conquest.
Newfoundland is ours!
Victors in the contest!
Your heroes have come home.
There also was a lyric honoring those dead with the line, “Valhalla has them now!” But I can’t for the life of me remember how it goes.
But I digress. The race itself was a surprisingly bright and ultimately warm run. I’d say we hit around 16 or 17 Celsius (say 65 or 70 degrees Fahrenheit). Not a lot of shade but a nice breeze. It may have been a touch warm for some not used to the heat but it was perfect for spectators and as a Floridian, I was pretty happy with the conditions.
The course itself wound through the streets of Reykjavik, passing places I recognized from our bus tours and from my own short training runs. I’ve run a few races with kilometer markings and it can mess with my head… Sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worst. Today was definitely for the better. Numbers came fast, as one would expect when I’m used to seeing them every mile and not every 0.6 miles. But the downside to this is that there are A LOT more numbers to be seen than 26. And it can be disheartening in those thirties to think, “whoa… Long way to go!”
But I had a good day. Around the 11km mark, marked as most intervals were by an orange cone bearing a number, I had my first sight of the TF crew. My mom rang hr cowbell and even Skippy seemed to have perked up. They told told me some superglue and a lot of heart pulled him through.
It was particularly a boost to see Mom and co as this was a quiet race. There were some spectators out and about cheering us on… Including one delightful family at the 2 kilometer mark (!!) who put on a pastry and chocolate spread complete with doilies and finger sandwiches. But there were times when there weren’t a lot of people and fellow runners, perhaps focused on their own goals and races, were more huffing and puffing than chatting and talking. That’s cool, I’m on board with that — sometimes I need to be in my head and just laser sharp mindful of one foot in front of the other. But there are also times when it’s nice to cheer on your fellow runners and to have a complete stranger say, “good job!”
I like to cheer my fellow runners on as I’m going and I was reminded of my own obligation around the first U-turn when TF runner Matt called out to me from the other direction cheering me on. It was like a wake up call to me and I then scoured the crowds looking for the teal and white shirts of my fellow teammates and cheered them… And made an effort to cheer everybody I could, regardless of who they were running with.
And amidst the decent sized field of runners, Sean Casey spotted me and cheered me on. I snapped a photo of him but he was too fast for my camera to focus.
The natural highlight of the course was probably this delightful waterfall stream.
As I said, the kilometers clicked by and I was feeling pretty solid. I was on a PR pace or close to it for the first half but thereafter each step seemed ever so slightly slower than the one before.
In the final 10k we looped back to the opening kilometers and I *thought* I knew where we were going… Only to have the course veer off toward some sort of swamp near the domestic airport and then around a golf course, this was a particularly sparse section. Still plenty of aid stations but just sort of the embodiment of the loneliness of the long distance runner. At the same time, I suppose it was also the embodiment of the individual strength of the long distance runner. I put my head down and the concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.
Coming into the finish line chute, I spotted a few of the folks from MarathonTours and high-fived them; truly the spirit of the marathon when even “competing” companies cheer each other on.
Best of all was that I spotted my number one fan, my Mom, as I approached the finish line. As we are wont to do, I snapped a quick selfie and told her I’d meet her at the end.
Crossing the line, I finished with s 3:16 and change gun time and what I would ,after find out was a 3:15:08 chip time. Second fastest time I’ve ever done, I think. Not quite a PR and not a BQ but a pretty great time.
Because they were getting ready to start the Family 3K, the finishing area was about closed off and chaotic. I couldn’t figure out how to get out of the pen to find mom and ultimately figured worst case scenario we could meet back at the hotel… Though I wasn’t entirely sure how I would do that with road closures as I was on the wrong side of the tracks.
Serendipitously, through some confluence of luck and timing, just as I was coming out of the secured finishers’ area, mom was coming down the street. We both had a look of, “Hey! I can’t believe this worked!” Moments before seeing each other I think we had the same thoughts about how the heck were we going to find each other. And yet it all worked out. Things usually do… But I’m a worrier and I suspect I inherited that from my Mom. Some call it being conscientious though; spin or reality, we try not to cause problems and work hard to make things work. To be honest, 99 times out of a hundred things work out for the people who are “la de da-ing” through life because people like Mom and me are moving mountains behind the scenes.
I brought Mom a pretzel from the finish line and to be honest, it was salty goodness in stick form.
We decided to go and cheer on Belinda and her kids as they were just about to start the fun run. We bumped into Diane who had the same idea — it’s always nice to run with and support good people. We were very fortunate on this trip to be with such lovely folks.
Trying to decide on lunch, we rounded the corner and saw the fun run was routed right past the Borg. We stopped and snapped a few more pics to send along to our new Aussie friends.
Because we had dinner plans with Sean and his friends at a nice restaurant before the evening festival fireworks, I thought it best to get lunch before heading to the hotel. We stopped at the kebab pizzeria place and after some internal debate opted to try the Istanbul Pizza. Adventures come in many forms and Bernaise sauce pizza was this afternoon’s.
Verdict – delicious. And kinda just what I needed after the run.
The evening saw us grabbing a pint with the TF crew at the Irish pub, the Drunken Rabbit. We swapped stories, told tales, drank some grog — it was a Viking victory celebration by way of America, New Zealand, and mostly Australia.
While others were headed off in search of a table in the booked solid restaurants, or to grab some of the tempting street cart fare, we headed up the hill to meet Sean for dinner. We met Sean and his folks at Easter Island and found out he was already signed up for Iceland as well… What a small, wonderful world it can be. Sean and his friends are all quite literally saving the world and making it a better place. From crisis management in far flung places to helping homeless LGBT teens in NYC, these are great people doing great things. Mom and I split a seafood pasta and lobster salad — oodles of great food made all the better by the company. So thanks to Jon and his wife Charlotte who organized it all, Sean, Claire, Geronimo and Adam and for inviting mom and me to a terrific post race celebration. They all did amazing on the course and earned the meal along with the medal!
August 20th wasn’t just the Reykjavik Marathon. It was also the Cultural Night Festival with performances, food, and at 11 pm, fireworks. Not to over play this phrase but the town quite literally blew their budget on the night sky — there were as many fireworks as I’ve seen exploding up there, shot in such rapid succession that even though the sun had set an hour or so previously, night became day… If only for the time it took for the ash to fall.
As we said our goodbyes, the dispersing swarm of people on the streets of Reykjavik rivaled the drunken revelry of a typical night on Bourbon Street. Celebrations abounded.. Including a guy who offered to take an Elfie for us (or a photo snapped by him as a short Camera Elf). Blitzed out of his wits, he still had enough verbal wherewithal to declare Florida a cultural wasteland unworthy of any success, visitors, or life. Jon said we’d really gotten a flavor of Iceland’s cultural best. His wife and daughter Isabella were awesome though so he wasn’t wrong.
Back at room 113, the smell of fish in the tap water as I took one more swig to rehydrate gave way to the crunch and clink of revelers outside our subfloor’s windows. They partied late into the next morning but I was so tired it didn’t bother me.
After all, I’d just had a great morning, afternoon, and night in Reykjavik.