 All right, check it out. It's race day Oslo Half Marathon. I am super excited, quite nervous. I'm running and my dad is running as well. And he's a veteran. He's been doing this race many times in his life for four years. He's run 15 or 16 marathons and lots of half marathons. And this is like the biggest race in Norway, also half marathon. We're both excited. We both have our goals. We both have our injuries. We're very worried, but it's going to be a good day regardless. So stay tuned. All right, so we are at the race now. I'm starting in about one hour and 10 minutes. Yeah, for the next half hour, I'm just going to chill. And then I'm going to do a little bit of a warm-up and then get in position and then off we go. My dad is starting in a later wave. We're both super excited. We both have a little bit of an injury though. I'm injured in the hamstring. I don't know if I will finish this race, but I surely will try. All runners have injuries and bad feelings or wounds and pain. Small pains here and there. That's natural. Very common. That's very common. And it's a bad sign, a bad omen, if everything is perfect. Because they aren't. There's always something. So it's a couple of days after the race now. You just saw the start. And I want to take you through the race, talk a little bit about my experiences, what happened, how I executed the race, how it felt. And I've got lots more footage from the day itself coming up as well. So let's get right into it. So you saw the start. Lots of people. Great event. Great vibe. Biggest race I've ever been in. My second ever half marathon. I loved it. It was really awesome. I was super nervous leading up to it. If you saw my pre-race vlog, if you didn't, you can check it out here. Some of my goals. I was nervous. I had an injury potentially in my foot, so I was worried about that. But you know what? It all went really, really well. I'm extremely satisfied. I ran a time of 1.33.38, which is like smack in the middle between my A goal and my B goal. So I knew I was probably in like one sub 1.30 shape if it was a flat race. But knowing the hills, I was thinking to myself probably I'm not going to be able to make that A goal. My B goal though, sub 1.35, that was attainable. I felt that was realistic and that's what I did 1.33.38. So super happy about the result. It was tough. It was painful, but it was a lot of fun. I started off and sort of felt my way into whatever felt naturally sustainable for me. Like without really thinking too much about the watch or my heart rate, I was like just going and feeling like what feels like the right pace. And after a couple of kilometers, I quickly sort of realized that you know that 4.15 pace that I needed to hold if I was going to do the sub 1.30 probably wasn't sustainable. And my heart rate was up at 1.90, almost from the get-go. It peaked on like 1.98 later in the race, which is like ridiculously high if you consider the fact that when I go to the track, I do workouts like VO2 max workout at between 1.92 and 1.98 BPM. My max heart rate is probably like 2.05 or maybe as much as 2.10, I don't know. So I was like up there at near my max heart rate already. I was like, oh my God, I can't sustain this according to the heart rate. And I wrote down to myself prior to the race, I'm not going to go above 1.90 until possibly later in the race. But I knew by my breathing that I was not above my lactate threshold. At least I thought so. And it turns out I was right because I finished the whole race at that intensity. I was not breathing heavy. I felt strong, felt good. This is sustainable. So that shows that my heart rate goes quite up during a race. So the excitement of the race, the people, it sort of drives my heart rate up 5 beats or so like that. So that's interesting. And of course, if you want to see all the juicy details about my heart rate and my pace and read my race report, you should go to Strava where I have a profile and you can follow me there and you can watch all my training and etc. So there's a link to Strava in the description. Check that out. So I continued. The first hill was no problem. I was running steady. I was running good. I felt pretty good. I mean it's tough, but I felt good. And I was able to maintain like a 430 type pace per kilometer, which equates to a sub 135 half marathon. So I was happy about that thinking I'm going to maintain this pace more or less. The race went on. I came down to the flat section of the race. 10 kilometers in. I was starting to feel it halfway through. You know, I was like, there's something going on in my legs right now, which is expectable. And I had a bad experience at Krukskugun Halmarathon, which is my last half marathon. You can watch my race log from that here where I actually ran too hard for the first half. And I was worried that might happen something similar again, but I was still feeling confident that probably wouldn't happen. I felt like I was really pacing myself well. So I was able to speed up a little bit on that flat. Coming into the middle of the race where the start area and finish area is, you sort of come in there again around 13 kilometers in. And that's where Matt was waiting for me. And he filled me as I passed him by. So check out the footage. I was feeling good at this point, except for a little bit of a sting that I had. I struggled a little bit at the aid stations. I hadn't practiced that much grabbing, you know, cups of water and drinking it on the go. So I wasn't able to get as much water in during first two aid stations. I was still taking my sugar mix, maltodextrin and fructose that I had with me in a little pouch, taking that at each aid station. And I think I took the third squeeze like 12 kilometers in, a kilometer before the next aid station. And that's when my sting started developing. So probably too much sugar, not enough water. And but then as soon as I got the water at the next aid station, I took a moment to just stop and just get down some water just to really get it in. And it resolved within like a minute or two. So that was good. And I took it easy for a little while because I was really, you know, excited. And it was all the people there. And I was running hard. And I felt like, you know, now's the hard part of the race. Like I'm two thirds in. It's time for the hard part. And it's also the hardest part in terms of climb is like a crazy climb going up there. So I was like, I took a moment to just slow down the pace a little bit. You can see it on the Strava file that my heart rate goes up a little bit around the 13k mark, which is like where all the people are in our masses. And then it goes down a little bit. My pace goes down a little bit where I'm just telling myself, it's just me in the pavement. It's just me in the pavement. I was like almost meditating, trying to just like get a hold of myself again before attacking that last section of the race going up, up, up, up. And it was amazing. Lots of people cheering me on, children high fiving me. It was fun, but it was hard. It was hard. I was trying to suffer hard at this point, but I was sort of knowing, Hey, this is this is going to work. I'm going to make it. I was my, my, my average pace was showing that I was on 430 pace and climbing like up to 431, 40, 32. And I had to stay at 430 or lower in order to go below 135. So I was worried, but I knew I was going to go downhill on the other, other side of that hill because it's up the hill and then it's coming back down the same route back to the finish line. So I was struggling up that hill and then finally I was opening up on that downhill. It's not as deep down. Well, there's a little bit of a steep downhill and then there's like a, you know, like a slack downhill going into the, the finish line where I really was able to push the pace quite a lot and, and reel myself back in to get down to like, I don't know, 428 per kilometer, pace average or something like that. Here I am on the final stretch before the finish line. And so there it is, 133 38, super happy about that result. I mean, it overall in the grand scheme of things, of course, it's not like that's like, whoa, like an impressive time in that sense. But for me at this point, it's certainly my personal best, certainly impressive for me at this point. But I know I'm going to go further. I'm going to, I'm going to not only go further in distance, but I'm going to go faster on that same distance as well. So I have big goals for next year. And I'm going to go in faster. Not sure if I'm going to do the exact same marathon, probably not thinking of doing a marathon as well later next year. We'll look at that as the new year comes around, we'll talk about my plans and my race goals, et cetera. But, you know, I'm going to lower that personal best substantially over the next few years, that's my plan, but super duper happy about that. And I feel like the fact that I was able to speed up at the end, the fact that I was able to, you know, keep that pace fairly consistent, my split times, my 5k split times throughout the whole race, very consistent, you know, which is one of the hallmarks of a good performance when you're able to stay consistent throughout. So I feel like I was really executing perfectly, really. Could have done a little better when it comes to the hydration, no, but that's very difficult with the cups and getting the water in without like getting it everywhere and losing it and not being able to swallow. I was very conservative in the taper because I was worried about my injury. So I ran very little. I don't know if that's a good thing or if I was would be better off with a little bit more training, at least in the two weeks out type of time range. Who knows? We'll find out over the years as I experiment more and more with the taper and racing, et cetera, gain more experience. I ran the Ultra, the one 2.5 shoes. I have a review of it here. Pretty great shoes for running half marathon, really lightweight. I would probably enjoy a little bit more cushioning, I think, at least in training. But whether or not it was optimal for the race, I don't know, it did feel pretty optimal, though. I mean, I ran a great race. So I guess it worked fine. At the finish line, there were a lot of bananas. Everyone's eating bananas. At the finish line, they provide bananas there, which is just awesome. And of course, carbohydrates. I mean, if you're running, when you finish running, bananas are like the optimal post run snack or meal, even. Of course, I had my own bananas with me, ripe bananas, because they weren't actually ripe. The bananas, they serve there. And after I finished my bananas, we went down to the same place where Matt's watched me pass, and we were waiting for my dad to pass. We didn't know whether or not he was actually going to pass us, though, because he had an injury pre-race. During the race, we weren't sure if he had broken down after three kilometers, but we were hoping. And sure enough, he came along sort of limping a little bit with his injury, but he was running pretty good at like 13 kilometers. Check it out. And here's the footage from him finishing the race. And you know, my dad, he's a veteran. He's done a lot of half-marathons in his life, and he's one of the slower ones. He pulled through despite having an injury. He had some things to say about that after the race. Check it out. All right, so my dad made it through. Yeah, I think like this. What do you call it? You call it the crown? He had like a strain in the hamstring, but it was close like this for 21 kilometers. But he pushed through. Yeah. Grinding through. Oh, yeah. And what was your time? Two and a half hours. Two thirty, fifty-five. So that's pretty good. I mean, considering the fact that you had an injury, it's the worst ever. Slowest ever half-marathon? Slowest ever. But yes, I did finish. That was fantastic. Yeah. Next year, 220. 218. 218. Yeah. You heard it. Yeah. It's a fantastic crown for the streets of Oslo. It's amazing. Really, really nice atmosphere. 16,000 runners. So that's it, really. Mads, of course, was with us, crewing, filming this, some of the footage, and, you know, taking care of our stuff, carrying it in his backpack before and after the race, etc. So that was really cool having him with us. And I look forward to seeing him, of course, along the course and the finish at the finish line. Overall, just an absolutely epic day at Oslo Marathon. It's a big event. It's sent live on national television here in Norway. So, you know, if you're leading, if you're up front, then you'll be on live television. I'm not saying that I will ever be up front on a road marathon or half-marathon. Well, who knows? Who knows? Probably not. And I'm more geared probably towards competing, eventually, in the ultra marathons and the mountain and the trail running and that sort of thing. But I do like road running. I like the purity of it. It's just, it's just you and the road. There's no obstacles. It's just about running. Feet going like that. Whereas in trails, there's more technical stuff and there's other variables and there's nature, which is why I actually like that more. But I do appreciate road running as well. And it was a really good day. I'm really happy about my race performance. I'm satisfied. As I said, check out my Strava profile if you want to know all the details from the race as well as my training. I also have an Instagram account where I post pictures. There's a link in the description for that as well. You should follow us on Facebook, link in the description for that as well. And of course, subscribe to this channel and check out some of the other cool videos that we have here from, you know, all things regarding running. Alrighty. Thanks for watching. So glad to have you with me here on this channel. Leave a comment, please down below. Tell me what you think about my video, about my race, about anything you want to talk about regarding running really. Let's keep going. My recovery is on. I'm having a couple of weeks now of recovery and then it's back on to training, building my fitness for future races. All right. Bye now.