The half marathon was in the plan as a tune-up and I was initially quite unsure if 3 weeks out from the marathon would be okay but decided that I would be able to recover enough for Hamburg - use it as a last hard hard effort with a week of recovery and then moving into the taper.

My training partner Sean and I arrived with our bikes but were quite slow in getting over into the starting area. This gave us a pretty bad starting place and although I could get to my race pace (~3:30/) for some km the groups that I was overtaking were more than 10 seconds slower than this up all the way up to half of the way through.

With three kilometers left I wanted to see what I could do and decided to hammer it down: 3:23/, 3:23/, 3:24/ with the last kick to the finish sub 3 minute pace.

It was great to run the race progressively (after having gone out too hard the year before) and was 8 minutes improvement for Berlin and almost a 6 minute PB.

The buildup hadn't been optimal but for the most critical phases I was healthy and injury-free. However, I was unrealistic in the last few weeks of the buildup coming from a good half marathon where I had a solid negative split. The primary goal had been to achieve the swedish qualifying time for the championships which had previously been 2:39 but was revised to 2:37. I had done a lot of training for 2:35 so thought I would go for it (also helped having a pace group) but it was already not feeling great after 10-12km and at 25km I knew I would not be able to keep the pace and just lost any drive and ended up jogging it in.

I enlisted Victor Smångs as my coach in June right after the Schlösserlauf and had this race essentially as the A race of the year, only 5 weeks before the 2nd marathon of the year.

I had been having good workouts and a good consistency until I got a double-whammy of a getting a stomach bug followed by covid within the last 4 weeks leading up to the race.

Fortunately I bounced back from being sick quite quickly and my metrics were looking pretty good. I was advised to be a bit careful going out and was glad I did. Plan was to go out together with Sean at sub-34 pace for the first 3km and then push a bit more. Turned into Sean leading for the vast majority with some switching between eachother until 1.2km to go where I said that we were 4 seconds over 34 minutes - I pushed and then slowed down again and Sean flew past. Eyes almost closed I just tracked his blue bib and then kicked with a few 100 meters to go and came in 2 seconds ahead of him.

The motto for today was don't be an idiot in the first half, don't be a coward in the second - fulfilled the first but undecided on the second. I was not obsessing too much on the splits and sitting comfortably with the groups that formed. Felt pretty good for the second half and then decided to catch up with the first place woman over the next few kms. Felt strong coming over 35km and even though the final climb was pretty brutal I got a lot of support which helped a ton.

When I was on the right side of the Göta Älv again it was really counting down the final km, not quick but also not completely dieing and with no-one to catch and no-one catching me up and knowing I would glide in under the 2:45 Berlin automatic qualifying time I was just trying to enjoy it. Really happy to have a positive marathon experience and a good motivator to knock out a quick marathon next year.

Such a motivator as well to finish as 11th and to feel so strong despite it being a tricky route. The recovery has also been really quick which gives me a good boost for the rest of the year (and makes me want to take on Göteborgsvarvet next year!).

I had aimed to run at 3:15/km pace, which would have been 15 seconds quicker than the 5km split that I got during the B2Run a few weeks prior so absolutely thrilled with the result - sub-17 last year and sub-16 this year and 3:11/ pace. There wasn't a hard taper - the week before had two pretty quick workouts: the Tuesday session had 2 x 3km that I did at around 3:30/ and then 10 x 400s in 70-75s and 30s of a standing break; Thursday was a massive 30 x 45" on and 15" off where the ons were run mostly under 3:10/ pace. Despite this, my legs and the rest of my body are feeling good.

Going forward I'm looking to extend this to 10km pace and hoping this speed can help me with the next jump on reducing my HM time.

After being sbubbed of the podium last year in the final couple kms I reall wanted to place in the top three this year. The opening however was very different with someone else jumping into the lead this year before being caught by Simon Müller.

Once everything settled after the first descent I found myself in fifth place and stuck there for the whole race. It was all pretty lonely apart from Sean catching up to me once.

Struggled quite a bit during the race and stomach didn't feel good after 20km but could put in a good effort. It was nice to be recognized by the race organiser Matthias Dahlmann.

Really hope to make in next year and to have even less time between me and first place. There were a lot of fast guys this year and the conditions were pretty tough (had thought my snow shoes would have given me the edge on the Vaporflys but alas, fitness trumps everything).