RACE REFLECTIONS: COPENHAGEN MARATHON WITH ALEX

Our very own Alex Winstone has, for a while, set his sights on breaking the 3-hour mark in the marathon. Having taken a few cracks, and after a brutally hot day in Berlin last year that left him frustrated, he decided it was the last time that he would leave a city without a PB beginning with a 2. Instead of try the same thing again, he asked in-house coaching expert Scott for help. Here's his reflection of how he fared in Copenhagen under new tutelage.

I landed in Copenhagen with legs that already felt tired from the training block before the race had even started. Months of alarms in the dark, a last minute back injury, checking weather apps like they contained stock market data. By marathon week I wasn’t sure if I was fit or just extremely tired.

The city felt almost offensively relaxed about the whole thing. Coffee drinkers stretched across pavements. Bikes everywhere. The most chilled expo I’ve ever experienced. Meanwhile I was carrying a bottle around like a life support device and mentally calculating my carbohydrate intake every 20 minutes.

Race morning arrived overcast and calm. One of those clean Scandinavian mornings where everything looks glowing at the edges. Standing in the start, I had the usual thought…why does everyone else look so calm? Marathon starts are strange because nobody speaks honestly. Everyone says they’re “just seeing how it goes” while secretly carrying a spreadsheet in their head with splits tattooed on their hands. I was no different.

The opening kilometers felt casual in that dangerous way that marathons sometimes do. Effortless enough to make you greedy. Crowds lined almost every section of the course and Copenhagen somehow managed to feel both huge and intimate at the same time. One minute wide roads and open sky, the next minute packed streets with people leaning out of apartment windows and cafes shouting like their lives depended on it.

By 32K I realised I was running bang on pace but still felt fresh. That’s the rare feeling you spend years chasing as a runner. Not confidence exactly, but absence of doubt.

Then came the long navigation over the final 10K.

Your body stops offering useful information at that point. Every thought feels catastrophic. A slight twinge becomes the beginning of collapse. A huge change in pace feels like the end of it all. I became deeply aware of my breathing, then my stride. As if overthinking any one of them might cause the whole race plan to fail.

But the pace increased.

Copenhagen kept unfolding around me. Tight turns, shouting spectators holding beers before lunchtime. On the final straight, I caught sight of the clock and did the kind of math runners suddenly become capable of while physiologically falling apart.

02:56:16.

I crossed the line. Not emotional. Not euphoric. Just still for a few seconds. Like all the noise from the training had finally stopped at once.

The strange thing about marathon running is how quickly it disappears. Months of preparation reduced to a finishing time, a medal, a few blurred memories from somewhere around 38k.

Running is funny. Flying across Europe to voluntarily lay it all out there is funny. Spending four months obsessing over splits, gels and threshold sessions is funny.

Still, for one morning in Copenhagen, everything worked exactly the way I would’ve hoped.

Onto the next x

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For this race, Alex wore the Hoka Cielo x1 3.0. Shop them here.