The Start
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Another friend was heading for one of those birthdays so naturally, being stranded
in deepest, darkest Oslo he thought the best place for the inevitable party
was Aland (pronounced “Aweland”) – a semi-autonomous island
archipelago lying between Sweden and Finland and technically part of the latter.
The plan was to dilute the hard drinking with a brief interlude of a marathon,
half M or 12 km Nordic walk – in short something that would allow everyone
to feel virtuous later on when they started to toast the happy birthday boy. |
| Months of laziness, injuries or hard training left us
with various levels of expectations and targets as we steamed out
of Stockholm
after jetting across on Ryanair the night before. Steamed seemed appropriate
as the crossing is stretched out to over 6 hours so that the Swedes
can take full advantage of the duty free status of Aland and its Ferries
as only Scandinavian (and perhaps Scots) can. Not knowing much about
the geography of Sweden, most of us expected to be going round in
circles for 4 hours but, as it turned out, we threaded our way through
a long series of skerries, fjords and islands before a couple of hours
of open water brought us to island capital of Aland: Mariehamn. The
town gave an immediate impression of a strange friendliness a bit
reminiscent of the “Night of the Living Dead” or “Village
of the Damned” films. Gastronomically, it was, well, very Scandinavian
with pizza, pizza and extra pizza about the limit. |
It cant be true
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On the Podium
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Race day dawned WHITE – it was going to be a peaceful, quiet
run! Garry and the other full marathoners set off around 8:30 while
the rest of us enjoyed a couple of glory laps of the track before
hitting the roads for the half M. I surprised myself by quite enjoying
the run with the scenery and snow masking the fact that I was road
running which is my excuse for my pedestrian 92mins something. Garry
was in a different league in the Marathon coming 5th overall (1st
old git) in an awesome 2:54! He was soon on top of the podium raising
the cup aloft in the name of “Carnethy Hill Running Club” which
the organiser took great pleasure in saying several times over the
tanoid. Our other friends rolled in at various times having had varying
levels of enjoyment. The birthday boy finished in 5hrs something and
immediately lit a fag after completing his first ever marathon only
months after starting to train and stopping smoking. Margaret-Anne
and Hilda had by far the nicest route in the Nordic walk whose competitors
flailed their arms, legs and poles along a weaving course of walkways
and cross country on either side of the peninsula unlike the marathon
routes which were both out and backs on THE main road (which wasn’t
closed to traffic). |
| The evening’s celebrations were very Scandinavian
albeit quite short as we were all knackered. The ferry back to the
very nice Stockholm
the next day had me thinking that a good dry suite would make this
part of the world a superb place to sea kayak.
Epilogue: “Garry MacInnes beats Lance Armstrong in a staggered
Time Trial” – The seven times Le Tour winner managed
to just dip under the 3 hrs at the recent New York marathon. Garry
obvious made good use of his Extra Pizza Orders but the question
that remains is will he return to repeat the feat another 6 times!
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Pride
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