The plan

Finland was part 2 of a double weekender. Ciara and I flew into Tallinn on Friday and I ran pretty much straight away. On Saturday, we walked around town a bunch and then had a five O’clock ferry to Helsinki. Many of the people on this ferry were Finn’s that cross the sea to stock up on cheaper alcohol. We had the Buffett booked for dinner and this followed a similar theme. €29 euros each and pour your own wine on tap for 90 minutes. The journey went by very quickly as I got down as much food (and wine, slightly counterproductive) as I could to address the calorie deficit and get some energy in my legs for the next morning. We got off the ferry at 7:30 and walked straight to the hotel.

We were staying in an Omena hotel which was basic to say the least. It was clean but there was no front desk and no staff, just a code that was text to your phone. Not luxurious but in a way perfect for our specific need - a cheap place to stay somewhere central. And if there’s no receptionist to give me weird looks when I come in and out drenched in sweat at silly hours in the morning, that’s not the end of the world.

The run

It was an early start. The alarm went at 4:30 and it took me a while to properly wake myself up and get out the door. I set off at 5:20 with a hard cut off for checkout by midday, preferably with time to wash and pack before.

In a city centre, 5:30 is often still the yesterday for some whilst you’re on tomorrow. This was the case for the first few miles as most of the people I saw were stumbling home from bars and clubs. I started by zig zagging some of the grid streets as I thought now would be the best time to try to run centrally. I didn’t know where exactly the main centre and high footfall areas were so just sort of went with it for a bit to see if I stumbled across much.

I didn’t really so moved to the next stage of the plan. I’d looked on Google maps before and saw a handful of green areas on the outskirts / water and thought I would utilise those. I decided to not look at the map on my phone for a while to try and learn the layout by eye a bit. I found the water pretty quickly but followed it away from the nearest park. This wasn’t an issue though as it brought me down a continuous path past a docking are with a bunch of small boats and sailing yachts.

Next came a pair of bridges over to an industrial area. Before crossing the second bridge I did get google maps out to check there was another bridge connecting back, but it wasn’t even an island I was going over to so that was fine. The main event were was a pretty sizeable power plant. Wikipedia tells me that it was decommissioned in 2023 but the low clouds made it look like a light smoke was still coming out.

I headed back towards the centre from here but didn’t quite have enough miles on the clock to make a pitstop. I was aiming to do two 10 mile segments then a 6, stopping for water and some food in between. I ended up at the main station and decided to go round it away from the hotel. This was a good decision as it led me to the nicest part of the run. The lake and park around it were very picturesque and much more peaceful than the relative 6:30am hustle and bustle at the station. I did one full lap and went back to the hotel pretty much bang on 10 miles and 7am.

The 10 minute mile pace was about as slow as I find myself running. The 36-48 hour gap between two marathons is definitely the worst in my opinion. When I’ve done two in 24 hours before, my legs haven’t seized up quick enough, allowing me to sort of ‘sneak’ in a second before my legs realise. However, two nights sleep and a little over 40 hours did not do me any favours that the extra rest might suggest. The same issue was the main cause in me failing to complete a marathon in Monaco and I felt a very similar stinging pain in my legs throughout in Helsinki. Luckily, it wasn’t bad enough to stop me completely this time, just significantly limit the length of stride and pace. The near constant rain at varying levels also didn’t help. And the slow pace meant my heart rate wasn’t very high and I felt the chill from the rain more than I’d have wanted.

I went out again for the second segment and headed in the opposite direction. I’d done a bit of East and North so then went West and South. West wasn’t much fun to be honest. I’m writing this in Helsinki airport and have already forgotten most of it. That was mainly just a bit of extra new distance and did the job it was intended to. The main focus of this segment was what looked like a large park on google maps at the bottom. There was a decent amount of distance I could get out of this park and the grassy stretch approaching it. The tree cover was very much appreciated as the rain intensified. I did a couple of zig zag laps in and around the park and thought I might have gone down a private road by accident when I saw a police van staring straight at me ahead and the US embassy to my right. It was just an open road and had a few other embassies as I followed it back down to the park. I went back the way I came and got to around 18 miles as I left the grass so did a bit of up and down the grid on the way back to get me to 20.

The third segment was North - West based. I thought the other big green space would obviously be another park, with a bit of orange for beech. But I zoomed in whilst drinking water in the room and saw that a lot of it was a cemetery. I headed in that direction anyway and was treated by about a mile and a half loop around the outside of the cemetery. I always have to sis out the culture around red lights and jay walking when running in a new place but definitely didn’t want to head straight in towards the graves for a jog. I finished up one lap with 23 miles on my wrist and wanted to minimise the grid running so went for another lap. The pace had dropped closer to 11 minutes by this point but I was comfortably on schedule so just tried to enjoy it as the rain had finally stopped for the last few miles. I didn’t want to do a step more than I had to so opted for some more zig zagging instead of a third lap and got it to the full marathon in sight of the hotel.

After the run

The marathon was over by about quarter past ten, but the real challenge had only just begun. Our flight back wasn’t departing until 23:25.

Check out at 12 and we’re aiming to get on the train to the airport at about 8 so had 8 hours to kill. Helsinki is a great city in some ways - very efficient, clean, safe, nice looking - but it isn’t very exciting. There are lots of museum type activities, but with incredibly tired knees and a heavy bag on my back, I couldn’t think of anything worse than the stop start walking and standing still waiting for Ciara to read signs (I’m the slow reader, so slow I don’t bother starting in most cases).

When Ciara suggested getting a ferry to an Island with a fort on it, I shot it straight down because I thought we’d be paying €100 for a slow moving tour. Luckily she stood her ground as the ferry was public transport and only cost a few euros and the island was a great place to walk around, and more importantly, sit. There were some museum and exhibit elements to the island and fort but we just skipped that and spent a few hours going round ourselves. We were back on the mainland at 5:30 with two and a half left. We had a bowl of chips in the restaurant / swimming pool place right next to the ferry drop off then walked a bit more and had another portion of chips at a Hesburger opposite the station. This wasn’t a nice place to wait, although the food was alright, so we just jumped on an earlier train and said goodbye to Finland. 35 marathons done.

Evidence