September 11 was round one of the adventure in Budapest.
The race expo was an extremely low key thing there were several tents set up in the huge City park with really poor signage to direct us. When we picked up our package on Saturday morning we probably only saw 20 - 30 other runners, if that. There was a booth selling discounted shirts from prior year events but no major sporting goods vendors.
By luck, the apartment we rented was steps from the last stop of the Metro line that went to the City park. On race morning, we made our way to the station and got on the train with 3 - 4 other fellows (still very low key), then the train pulled into the next station and what felt like 1,000 runners piled into our three car train. I don't know how many people must have been left on the platform, tough luck to anyone hoping to catch the train at the next eight stops. This was our first hint that this was going to be a big race (we had heard there might be 9,000 - 15,000 runners but there was certainly no sign of them at the race expo).
From the last stop on the Metro, it was about a 10 minute walk to the City park to find the bag drop area and the start line. The bag drop was well organized with numerous tents set up and arranged by bib number. After dropping our bags we made our way to the start area for the usual pre-race routine of lining up for a last pit stop. There were a generous number of portopotties, unfortunately, they were quite gross and lacking in paper.
The weather for the week we were in Budapest was uncharacteristically warm at 25 to 30 degrees Celsius. As with most European running races, the start time for this race was 9 am. Needless to say, it was an extremely warm race. Thankfully, the humidity was very low.
The route is lovely and flat and is very scenic, running throughout the old city and along the Danube river. The portions of the run that were along streets were nicely shaded, at least in part, the section from km 7 to km 11 was on a bike path along the Danube, this section was extremely tough as there was no shade and any breeze there may have been was behind us.
This race was a stand alone half marathon with a 2 hour 30 minute time cutoff. The extract from the race guide read as follows: The race will be followed by closing bus with a 7min 10 sec/km speed. If the last runner of the field is running slower than that his/her bib will be crossed and will not be allowed to enter the finish area (the guide also indicated that the gross time limit (after the last starter) was 2 hours 46 minutes but I missed that little detail). I really struggled through the first half of the race and I seriously expected to be passed by that closing bus so I spent a bit of time looking over my shoulder checking to see how many runners were behind me. I finally started to feel a bit better after about 13 – 15km, I knew I wasn’t going to make to 2:30 time cut off but I could see that there were far too many people behind me to get passed by the bus. My discomfort was due to a combination of the heat and two days of walking up and down too many stairs leading to really tired quads. (Eta - my finish time was 2:35 ish, 2nd last of the Canadian contingent).
The finish line was on the far lane of the road that we started along, somehow with the volume of people it seemed like a completely foreign area. After some confusion, I managed to make my way back to the package drop off tents and to meet up with the rest of the gang.
The finish area had the usual selection of vendors giving away/selling food and beverage samples, including a really horrible tasting vitamin enriched energy drink (which some naïve Americans thought was beer samples).
Rather than spending much time hanging out at the race finish area, we headed off to the nearby Széchenyi thermal bath for a soak and a well deserved massage. This was a really lovely and large spa complex with three outdoor pools of various temperatures and numerous smaller baths inside of varying temperature from frigid to near par-boil. Hot soaks and cool/cold plunges were a great way to relax after a race, however, our post race recovery “meal” of sausages and beer was probably not optimal so after a couple of hours, we called it a day and headed back to our apartment to find some more substantial sustenance.
