Odense-- Marathon and Labor talks

One aspect of our trip I am excited about is the marathoning opportunity. I love to run and am always happier when I keep up a training schedule but the variability of the vagabonding lifestyle makes it easy to lose track of training. Marathons will, I hope, motivate me to keep up. Sunday the 24th I ran with about 3000 other people in the Odense Marathon. It was a communal experience, everyone working against the same challenge. The common language was Danish and there were a lot more hot pants (the Scandinavians are ever practical in this regard, lots of spandex shorts) and Danish flag running jerseys but otherwise it felt much like the Seattle Marathon. The weather was 15 C and cloudy at the start of the race and as I made conversation with the only other short guy in the starting area the universal smell and feel of the pre-race was upon us.
Mercy and I arrived in Odense on Friday night after an adventures day finding her family village that she’ll tell you about in another post. We found our Servas hosts, Bo and Eleonara, waiting for us with pasta and many beers for the pre-pre-race dinner. Bo, a solidly built union activist machinist (he works for the Danish company Maersk building the biggest ships in the world) is a beer connoisseur and labor/socialist liberal. Elenoara,(Elu) a tall blond Venus d’Milo lookalike, is a Russian emigrant studying pharmaceutical chemistry at university and raising their two daughters Susan, and Emilia. Their seven and four year old girls kept everyone entertained and fell in love with Mercy even through the language barrier.
Our evening of political discussion, good food, and good beer (I didn’t want to OVER purify before the race) ended early in their little apartment and we went to bed in the girl’s vacated room. The next day Elu guided us across town to the University on the family bikes where she showed us the chemistry department at the university and I retrieved my race number. It was a window into the family’s daily commute. Elu peddles about 5k to the University with the smaller girl on the seat behind her while Bo peddles with Susan on the half bike behind him to Susan’s school and then rides on to his co-workers house to carpool to work about 20k away.
After a ride back to the apartment Elu handed us off to Bo who drove us to the farmer’s market for 4 kilos of organic leeks, great cheese, and more pastries for me. We did a bit more provisioning at the BAZAAR (an indoor Middle Eastern market in an old industrial building where about a hundred merchants sell all the necessary viddles) before returning to the apartment for our attempt at cooking for them. The evening highlight was a walk to their allotment garden (allotment gardens are a throwback of the industrial revolution kept alive in much of Northern Europe. They are surprisingly large tracts of land where urban families living densely in high rise or midrise apartment buildings can have their own garden space to grow their own food and/or to sit sipping tea with friends). Only 600 meters from Bo & Elu’s apartment building we entered an almost rural enclave of about 100 small “city lots” delineated by shrubs and low fences. Many yards had small lawns, patios, fruit trees, some had gardens, grape arbors, or animal pens. It was like a neighborhood made up only of back yards with all the beautiful things people do in the best yards but without the junk piles that end up all over ours. There’s a rule that the hedges and fences cannot be taller than the table so neighbors can always see each other and socialize. There’s also a rule that it must be quiet in the garden between noon and two so one can nap, but I digress. Many allotments had little buildings in the yard where tenants had small kitchens for making snack and tea and a bed for taking afternoon naps. There was even a section of the allotment garden for keeping animals and those yards were full of chickens, passenger pigeons, and ducks. It was a great community space that was part p-patch garden, part country farm, and part picnic in the park.





Sunday brought our lovely stay with Bo, Elu and the girls to a close. Mercy had to tear herself away from her new playmates Susan & Emilie. It was sad to go and we were glad to have the marathon to distract us. My goal for this race was to run the first half of the race under control and to run each 10k of the race faster than the previous 10k. Running negative splits requires self control and pacing through the exhilaration of the start, motivation to push past others in the doldrums of the middle miles, but provides a great boost when you get to pass many at the finish. As most of you know, self control is not my primary virtue (hide the cookies, please) and I am often swept away by the early fervor of the race. This time I ran a controlled race and felt better at the finish than I had in any other marathon. I finished in 3 hours and 13 minutes and in the recovery area was greeted by the my favorite element of a European marathon, a hydration table full of cold beer!

The first marathon of the year was great fun. But now I am looking forward to the Istanbul Marathon on October 28Th!