Ørestadsløbet - a race to a race

Ørestadsløbet – another one of those Danish words seemingly invented to ensure that foreigners will never be able to speak the language properly - was highly amusing. I had had to travel to London on Tuesday night, to attend a meeting on Wednesday, and my return flight was scheduled to arrive at 18:40. The start, 5km down the road at Ørestad, was scheduled for 19:15 and, thinking the fastest way to get there would be by bike, I had taken my bike to the airport on the back of the taxi on Tuesday and parked it in a prime getaway position near the exit from Customs.

At Heathrow I changed into my running gear, with my number 232 already pinned on – though wore a pair of shorts and a T-shirt over the top to avoid looking too ridiculous. Delays on the ground at Heathrow meant we were almost half an hour late taking off. I urged the plane forward, anxiously looking out for the Dutch coast, northern Germany and finally the various disjointed bits of Denmark until we landed and were on the stand at 19:00.

The race therefore started as a sprint through the airport – or a fast walk to avoid being mistaken for someone trying to blow it up. I was outside at my bike at 19:05 facing one last challenge…5km on a mountain bike in 10 minutes, and having never cycled in this area before, unsure of where the bike route was. I just headed for the 20 story block on the western horizon which I knew stood next to the start, and after a little bit of wiggling about arrived at the scene a little late. Officials were just taking down the start banner, and there was no sign of Brunch Girl (see ‘British Rail’) who had run the earlier 5km race and with whom I had arranged to go for a BBQ afterwards. I locked up my bike and asked which direction to start in...and set off in pursuit about 8 minutes late.

The course was roughly triangular – straight out for 4.5km, right for 1km, then back in 4.5km, with the ‘in’ trail converging on the ‘out’ trail about 1 km out from the start / finish. The girl standing at the junction directed me along the ‘out’ trail and told me to catch people up.

Just after the 3km marker – which had just been picked up by a boy on a bike who was following the last runner – I caught up with the back marker. I thought about telling her she was now last but it wouldn’t have been very encouraging. From that point on I was weaving through the crowd – not so difficult as there was plenty of room – and counting off the numbers as I went past. I decided to aim to overtake 100 people, and had achieved this somewhere between 7 and 8 km. A new goal of 150 was set. The directing girl at the junction at the 9km mark looked surprised to see me now in the middle of the pack, and shouted something in Danish which may have been encouragement.

The final km was a slight rise up to the station – I ended up with an official time of 47 minutes and something, having overtaken 155 runners - and timed myself at around 40 minutes – I don’t have a digital watch so I can never time runs to the second. Brunch Girl had actually not given up on me either and was waiting there with a slice of water melon and a drink, having run her best 5k, so I had those and we then headed down to the beach for a BBQ.

A very amusing run!