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Robin's Story
Tampere half-marathon
Having competed in my first (and only) World Masters Athletics Championships in San Sebastian, Spain in 2005 at the age of 40, I was probably due to give it another go and so, 17 years on, I headed to the World Masters Athletics Championships in Tampere, Finland. In Spain, I had completed the marathon but no marathon was scheduled in the Finnish timetable so I opted for the half marathon.
8 weeks earlier, I had competed for the Great Britain and Northern Ireland (GB & NI) Masters team in the European Masters Non-Stadia Championships Half Marathon in Grosseto, Italy. On a warm day, I had finished 7th in the M55 age category and had been part of the silver medal winning team.
Medal hopes
Hopes of winning a team medal in Finland were high, especially as GB & NI has one of the leading half marathon runners in the world in the M55 age category. However, within hours of arriving in Finland, the GB & NI Team Manager informed us that our star athlete would not be running but that we may still be able to get a team medal if we all ran to our predicted times.
Preparations and forecast
I spent 6 days in Tampere watching the stadium athletics, including watching former World Champion and World Record holder Mike Powell in the M55 long jump competition. During the week, the weather can best be described as changeable with 30 degree-plus temperatures intermingled with torrential downpours but that meant that I was prepared for all conditions as I had encountered them during my training runs leading up to the day of the race.
The day of the race dawned cloudy but warm and stayed that way throughout the day. Competitors were transported by bus from the main athletics stadium to the start at the conference hall. I had about an hour until the start of the race so took the opportunity to place some drinks at a pick-up point at the start of the lap. As the course was 3 laps, this meant that I would have drinks available near the 7 and 14 kilometre points and this proved to be vital as the water stations provided by the organisers proved to be wholly inadequate.
Race start
With men and women in all age categories from 35 to 90, the start was congested to say the least. The organisers asked all athletes in age categories 35 to 50 to line up at the front so I was quite a way back but that was not necessarily a bad thing as it stopped me setting off too quickly. I was running alongside a GB & NI M55 runner who had also run in Italy so we knew we were pretty well matched and could support each other.
Finding the rhythm
By about a kilometre into the race, I was running my own race without having to dodge in and out of athletes who had started too far up the field. The course was pretty uninspiring being alongside a main road and then through a housing estate before returning to the industrial estate where we started. The first lap was mostly about settling down and trying to ensure that I wasn’t overdoing it. Time wise, I was about where I wanted to be and I was still running with my team mate.
Pushing the pace
The only thing that really changed on the second lap was that we began to catch athletes who had gone off too quickly or were starting to struggle in the humid conditions. At the end of the second lap, I was feeling okay and still pretty much on target on my watch as I picked up my final drink. My strategy was to avoid pushing the pace until about 16 kilometres, hoping that I would be able to pick off runners tiring in the last 5 kilometres. As it was, I began to go clear of my team mate at 15 kilometres and began to improve my race overall position as I overtook runners. By the 19 kilometre point, I was pretty much throwing everything that I had at it and managed to sustain that level of effort until the finish, overtaking another 4 or 5 athletes on the way.
Race end and results
In the end, I finished 7th in the M55 category in a time of 1:20:36. Unfortunately, the GB & NI M55 team narrowly missed out on the bronze medal after the Dutch team ‘parachuted’ an M65 athlete into their team and pushed us out to 4th place.
I was disappointed not to come home with a medal but had an enjoyed a fantastic week in Finland and will probably not leave it 17 years until I seek out another World Masters Athletics Championships.
