Machine-translated from Faroese and not yet reviewed. Read the original.
As we wrote in September, the plan was for Joan Bláfoss to run her first official marathon in Berlin. Because of a foot injury, however, she had to postpone her debut until the Frankfurt Marathon, which was run yesterday morning. Every cloud has a silver lining: while the sun beat down on the sweating runners in Berlin, conditions for running a marathon in Frankfurt yesterday were close to perfect.
And Joan knew how to make the most of it. Although she had said beforehand that she would be happy with a time just under three hours, she set off at 4:00 pace and went through 10 km at just about 40 min. As a triathlete, Joan is used to being more or less tired when she takes on the marathon. So you might have been tempted to think that, with fresh legs from the first kilometre, she might go at it too hard and start a little too fast. But it soon became clear that Joan is a very experienced runner who is very good at holding an even pace. Her time at 20 km was just under 1:20 and her pace was as even as it could possibly be.
Joan Bláfoss set a new Faroese record over the marathon distance, and will now focus solely on running for a while!
Marathon experts tend to say that to run as perfect a marathon as possible, the first half should be 1–2 minutes faster than the second. Here too Joan showed she could run as well-drilled a race as you could imagine. She ran the first half marathon in 1:24:16, while the second half marathon took her 1:25:53. Not until 30 km did her pace drop a little, but it was still high. And over the last 2.2 kilometres she managed to squeeze out her last reserves of strength and even pick up the pace a little again.
When all was said and done, Joan’s final time was 2:50:09. That is a huge Faroese record over the distance. The old record was set by Rigmor N. Arge in Copenhagen in 2008, when she ran the distance in 3:09:09. Joan’s time is enough for a provisional fourth place on the Danish rankings for 2011. Joan finished 34th in the women’s race. Some 3,000 women and 10,000 men took part, and out of all these 13,000 Joan was no. 374.
In the wake of this fine result, Joan has now decided to go all in on running and try another marathon in the spring. Where that will be has not yet been decided, but Hamburg and Copenhagen are being considered.
That Joan is now leaving her bike in the basement and putting her swimming gear in a pile at the bottom of the wardrobe is very exciting for FÍF. Joan is by far the best Faroese woman in long-distance running, and she can be expected to do very well in competitions in Denmark, where last year she won silver at the Danish Championships in the 10 km road race. And now it will be exciting to see whether she will also be part of our team for the Island Games in Bermuda in just under two years.
FÍF congratulates Joan on this outstanding result and record, and we look forward to seeing her at many more running races. Good luck!
Joan’s split times:
- 5 km: 19:51
- 10 km: 40:00 (20:09)
- 15 km: 59:52 (19:52)
- 20 km: 1:19:56 (20:04
- 25 km: 1:39:50 (19:54)
- 30 km: 2:00:06 (20:16)
- 35 km: 2:20:29 (20:23)
- 40 km: 2:41:12 (20:43)
- 42.195: 2:50:09 (8:54 = 4:03)
