The half marathon... the easy part.

So, let me tell you about the actual half-marathon that Jonathan, Erika and I ran on Saturday. It was a different experience than the races I had back in the U.S 3-4 years ago. First, one should notice the redundancy in the trail. I am copying the the map below:The run consisted in going 6 loops along Krasni Prospekt, the main street of Novosibirsk. That's 12 times going along the street and passing Lenin's statue on Lenin square. As a fan of Lenin, I say "Spassibo, Novosibirsk. Thank you". But as a runner, I say: Novosibirsk, what are you doing? You have at least 2 other streets without giant potholes... Use them and make a loop! Look at what France did years ago: it expanded the "Tour de France" race beyond its main avenue, the Champs Elysee... It really helped attracting more participants.

Another peculiarity of this race is that they had the girls starting before the guys. Girls started at 10:00 am and guys at 10:07am. So at 9:57am, one of the organizers called the girls at the starting line. It first looked like this:
Erika (the one with the white shirt) felt a bit confused, but then she realized she had a chance to cross the finish line in the top 3. That's when they called the other girls (maybe 50 to 60?), and Erika saw her chances of winning the race dropping. The girls finally started. It looked like this:Erika got a good start, not far behind the front girls. But later she let them take their distance and eventually she did not win the race...

Finally the guys started. Jonathan (172) and I (149) were ready and motivated to finish this race quick (maybe in 3 loops?). Apologies to Mr 260, whom I did not intent to embarrass by posting pictures of him while relaxing, but I really don't have time to crop this picture tonight.

So we waited quite some time before they allowed us to run and catch up with the girls. I started to feel tired again and this picture got me yawning without covering my mouth with my hand. What a lack of etiquette (isn't it, Mr 269?)
I got a few more pictures of the guys before the start, but I'm sure you'll understand why I won't post more. So let's get to the actual race.
Well, doing 6 loops has the advantage of taking away any feeling of surprise after the second loop, and lets you refine the strategy loop after loop. But there are only so many strategies for a poorly trained runner, so mine was to actually run as fast as I could all the time without getting too tired. It worked all right. But the one who got all the attention was Erika. Here is a small movie of her impressive finish:

The MC went to congratulate her for her finish. and was surprised to find out she was Italian. "You're not Russian? Italian! She is Italian! Not Russian..." and blah blah blah. Obviously he was not a professional journalist. Any decent reporter would have asked better questions, such as: "With such a strong finish, one can wonder whether you really gave as much as you could in the rest of the race. Any advice for the young participants on how to better manage efforts during the run?"


I did not receive such a warm welcome when I crossed the finish-line. They treated me like the guy who borrowed the electronic chip a 1h39min too long and must return it straight away rather than a runner.
As for Jonathan, he finished the race limping. All the attention he got was some condescending remarks from some other participants.
Well, overall, it was an interesting experience. I can't tell whether I'll sign up next year. More photos of the actual race are below... Enjoy.
A special thanks to our supporting team, Natasha, Nadine and Nicolas! And visit Erika's Novosibirsk International Cultural Exchange site for her account of the race.

The most difficult half-marathon

Today, I ran the half-marathon of Novosibirsk. Jonathan, Erika and I had planned that for about 6 weeks, which is a decent amount of time to prepare physically for the race (21.1 km). However, it is quite tight to go through the administrative hurdles in order to participate to the race. It looks easy on paper: all you need is
(i) a medical certificate dated after Aug 20 that you are apt to run the race,
(ii) a registration form completely filled out, and
(iii) a receipt of the bank where you went to do a transfer of 300 rubles to the bank account of the race organizer. Finally, before the race, you need to bring these 3 documents to the race organizers.
That's where running a half-marathon in Siberia is turning into a team sport; here is the list of the people to whom I say a "big thanks" for helping me doing this race:
-the lady at the bank who told me that the information about the bank account given on the race's website was erroneous, and she could not do the transfer
-my beloved girlfriend Katya who called the race organizers to know the exact reference of the bank account to which the money had to be transferred (in addition, she received a "big thanks" from the race organizers who had not figured out until then why nobody had signed up for the race, until Katya told them about the error)
-My doctor Alexey at work who accepted to sign and stamp a document that said I was in good health to run the race;
-Erika, who logged in 2 days before the race and found out the last-minute small-print announcement that the start of the race was moved from 1pm to 10 am.
-and of course, the support team (Nadine, Nicolas and Natasha) who got up early to cheer us during the race.

Here is the list of the people whom I do NOT thank:
-the lady from the organizing committee at office 1, who estimated that Dr Alexey was not a proper doctor to evaluate that I was in good shape, and who wouldn't let us run the race. She was of the opinion that, in addition to the official "physician" stamp and signature, Dr Alexey should have put an official stamp of the clinic he was working in. We called Dr Alexey on the phone and the lady lashed out at him like he was a worthless piece of s--t, and still wouldn't accept us in the race. After I showed her a printout of the registration rules, which said that a doctor from a workplace was entitled to sign such document, she took the printout from me, read it (probably for the first time) and accept my application on the condition that I write in Russian and sign: "I am healthy" (which must have read: 'I am hell-sy', because she did not look pleased with my Russian grammar when I handed out the form).
-the lady from the organizing committee at office 2,who estimated that foreigners must pay more than Russian participants and did not accept the bank receipt I handed out to her. Here again, a printout of the registration rules which I carried with me helped me out. Still, she had to call 2 higher authorities before letting me in.
-the lady from the organizing committee at office 3, who had me rewrite all the information on the registration cards on separate pieces of papers, and called me at work later on for additional information.
-the organizing committee who changed the time of the race 2 days before the race

The hardest part of the race was done when we were approved to sign in. I'll tell you about the easy part (the race) in my next post. That was interesting too...