In order to celebrate Paavo Nurmi's 115th birthday I made an attempt to break FKT of Paavo Nurmi Challenge, i.e. run from the statue of Paavo Nurmi in Helsinki to the statue of Paavo Nurmi in Turku. FKT was then held by Tero Töyrylä who ran at May 2002 the course sub 17,5 hours. My target was to run sub 16 hours which was supposed to by my goal pace in 24h World champs couple of months later.
The start happened at friday, June 15th 2012 at 8 PM in order to avoid running against the wind which was expected to cease at night and also avoid most of the traffic as an old 110 road have quite much traffic during summertime. The weather was close to the perfect, temperature at the start time was about 20 degrees C and at night lowest about 8 degrees C. Saturday was quite warm and when I reached the statue the temps were already over 20 degrees.
I was accompanied the whole distance by Petri Haavisto who also was capable to run below previous FKT. We were supported with my wife, my friend and at later part of the course also with his wife. That had a huge positive impact to our performances. We ran together first 110 km, after that I ran alone and finished in 15.44.27. I don't know why Garmin Connect shows something else as time was taken with the Garmin on my wrist and besides that with two separate watches used by my support crew which showed 15.44.26 and 15.44.27. Unfortunately those displays were not photographed at the finish. Petri finished in 16.19.15, well below previous FKT also. My pace was 5.43/km and nice coincidence is that about three months later I was 6th in 24h World champs with then Finnish national record 252,250 km which is 5.42/km pace, so both my main targets for that year were fulfilled.
Eight years later my and Petri's time are still two fastest achievements on Paavo Nurmi Challenge, despite some attempts to break FKT.
My split times (taken from Garmin Forerunner 310XT, no officially measured distances):
10km: 0:55:16 0:55:16
20km: 1:51:20 0:56:04
30km: 2:47:24 0:56:04
40km: 3:45:51 0:58:27
50km: 4:43:39 0:57:48
60km: 5:42:39 0:59:00
70km: 6:41:47 0:59:08
80km: 7:42:14 1:00:27
90km: 8:42:03 0:59:49
100km: 9:40:44 0:58:41
110km: 10:40:37 0:59:53
120km: 11:35:54 0:55:17
130km: 12:30:28 0:54:34
140km: 13:25:03 0:54:35
150km: 14:21:19 0:56:16
160km: 15:16:58 0:55:39
165,5km: 15:44:26 0:27:28
Garmin Connect with altitude corrections claims total ascent of the course is about 900 m, without altitude corrections GC shows 1400 m and with different tools I've got ascents between 1100 - 1500 m. Unfortunately neither of us had no barometric altimeter with us so I have no reliable data about total ascent.
My reports in my old blog (in Finnish):
- https://ultrafinn.blogspot.com/2012/06/juosten-helsingista-turkuun-alle.html
- https://ultrafinn.blogspot.com/2012/06/helsinki-turku-juoksu-numeroita.html