This weekend past Oziel and I ran in the half-marathon celebrating 10th anniversary of the Øresund Bridge, linking Copenhagen in Denmark and Malmö in Sweden.

Normally this impressive feat of architecture is only open to motorised vehicles (cars and trains and such), so truth be known, our primary reasons for participation was to see this thing up close, with enough time to really take it in. But we decided we may as well use the opportunity to get fitter.

We have both been training for this event since our trip to Australia. For me training resulted my first visit to the doctor in Sweden, after pulling a muscle in my foot. Oziel, however, preferred to wage war on his knees.

After both taking three weeks to recover from our injuries, just before the race, we didn’t think we would finish within our registered completion time of two-hours to two-hours-and-fifteen-minutes.

In total 30,000 people participated in the race. I didn’t fully appreciate the sheer quantity of this number, until it took us almost 17 minutes to get part the start line from when the starting pistol was fired.

The race started with four kilometres through a tunnel, to a man-made island between Denmark and Sweden. The tunnel was very hot and smelt of sweat. Every couple of minutes the runners started clapping and cheering. The sound was intense. As soon as we reached the fresh air at the tunnel exit the runners I let out a sigh of relief with the two runners on either side of me.

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The next four kilometres were across the man-made island. Oziel told me to push myself here so that I could take it easy on the climb to the top of the bridge. But it was at kilometre 7 seven that I found my energy. Up until this point I felt like everyone was running past me. But from this point in the race I felt like people were getting in my way.

The bridge was spectacular (8 km). I slowed down to take some photos on my phone, but didn’t want to break my rhythm. That’s why the towers appear at a less structurally sound angle than expected. (The cameras in our phones obviously require us to stay more still than running allowed.)

The final five kilometres, through the streets of Sweden, was when I found people were really getting in my way. It was during this time that I saw the pace-keepers for the two-hour finish. They started before me, so I knew as I overtook them that I was going much better than I expected. This gave me even more energy. But the streets were crowded, and I felt like I was running much further than the official distance as I zigzagged through the crowd.

As I reached the finish line I hit a wall of runners who had given up. My final sprint turned to a death march as people groaned with pain, awaiting their bananas, water and medals.

My official time was 1:53:13, putting me in 6293rd place. This [unexpectedly] beat Oziel’s 7811th place at 1:57:43.