Machine-translated from Faroese and not yet reviewed. Read the original.
Knowing how to save the best till last is often considered an art. But saving the best for so long that it goes off…. is that an art too….?
When I summed up the Winter Series, I didn’t write about the women. That was because I thought their results were so good that they deserved to be covered in an article of their own. The topic could have become stale and gone off by now, but because the standard of women’s running is so high, and the Island Games are just around the corner, I think it is still of the greatest interest, and so I have sat down to finish what I started a month ago.
There was not a great deal of suspense ahead of the race in Runavík. Bjørk had already secured the overall win beforehand, and Súsanna and Rannvá were set to take 2nd and 3rd place. Bjørk had won the race in Hvannasund, which was also run over 10 km, so comfortably ahead of Súsanna that no real contest was expected on the day. The biggest questions before the race were therefore whether Súsanna would manage the qualifying time for the Island Games, and whether Bjørk had any chance of getting close to the fine 10 km record that Joan Bláfoss set at the DM a week earlier.
It turned into a superb duel between the two of them, at a much higher pace than expected. Súsanna attacked fearlessly and kept Bjørk a few metres behind for the first three kilometres. Then Bjørk came up, and they ran together until there were 3-4 km left. Then Bjørk picked up the pace even more and ran away from Súsanna, who nevertheless managed to keep up a good speed all the way to the finish.
Both of the questions mentioned earlier got a positive answer. Bjørk ran 37:23 min and was only 46 seconds off Joan Bláfoss’s Faroese record, and Súsanna, with 37:47, comfortably got under the qualifying time for Island Games selection.
A year ago Bjørk Herup Olsen took the old 10 km record, which was over 39 minutes. Now, this past week, first Joan Bláfoss ran a new record time of 36:37 min and 5th place at the DM. And now on Saturday both Bjørk and Súsanna S. Sørensen ran cracking times on the same course, 37:23 and 37:47 respectively. Bearing in mind that the Island Games standard is 40:07, anyone can imagine how good these results are.
That is why I think it is interesting to look at the 10,000 m results at the Island Games over the last 10 years.
- 1999: Gold 40:27 – Silver 40:28 (our own Sunniva Bjarnastein!) – Bronze 40:31
- 2001: Gold 38:38 – Silver 39:21 – Bronze 40:16
- 2003: Gold 37:34 – Silver 37:37 – Bronze 37:48 – 5th place and current Faroese record: Borgarhjørt Holm 39:01.6
- 2005: Gold 38:19 – Silver 38:27 – Bronze 39:05
- 2007: Gold 37:23 – Silver 38:03 – Bronze 38:37
10 km road running and 10,000 m track running are two different events. But the times our girls have run, well wrapped up in wintry conditions, should probably get even better when they step onto the track lightly dressed. It has not yet been decided which distances our athletes will go for, but as can be seen above, our girls have a good chance of getting involved where the real fun is. The Island Games record is held by the Åland athlete Ann-Catrin Nordman, who in 1997 ran 36:11.68.
