After I had received various running event recommendations from my "fellow runners" at the Black Forest Marathon 2021 in Bräunlingen, I decided on the Stockholm Marathon, which was announced for June, 4th 2022. As I didn't want to fly to Sweden for just two or three days, I had planned a two-week round trip with stops at various national parks for hiking.
The motto of the marathon and the (new) sponsor was "Impossible Is Nothing". That was already very motivating. I felt well prepared - two half marathon races and 4 long runs over 30km. But of course, two running sessions a week are only enough to run a marathon, but not for best times.
On an unusual day for a city marathon (Saturday) and at an unusual start time (12am or 12:10am for me) I started. The starting line-up was on the street in front of the old Olympic Stadium from 1912 and after the Swedish national anthem sung beautifully by a singer, about 10,000 runners set off for 42.195km of "sightseeing" through Stockholm.
There were two rounds to run through the city, passing some well-known sights (town hall, castle, old town, etc.). These two rounds made it relatively easy for my daughter, who accompanied me on this trip (together with a friend of hers), to get to the three meeting points we had arranged beforehand.
The weather forecast had predicted nice weather and so it was. And it was warm. I had read before that the course in Stockholm is not flat. But when you run it yourself, you feel it all the more. There were three / four long easy climbs, e.g. at km29 and at about km33, the Västerborn bridge known as "The Climb", which had to be run in the bright sunshine. Quite sweaty...
At the beginning I calclated a finish time of about 4:45 hrs, but in the end I crossed the finish line in the Olympic Stadium after almost 5 hours.
The beautiful finisher shirt and the medal were the "compensation" for the 42km "sightseeing" tour.
In summary:
Good:
• many spectators, especially in the city centre
• great atmosphere along the course (probably also because of the nice weather)
• nice course (except for some construction sites that had to be passed, also a tunnel had to be run through)
• sufficient food (water, later Cola, Red Bull and Iso, bananas, apple slices and at the end salty broth and pickled cucumbers(!)
• showers on the course to cool down
Not so good:
• kilometer markings only sporadically or not visible
• Course markings could be improved
• Hardly any porta-potties on the course (many runners disappeared into the green areas on the way)
The insufficient course markings also had consequences for the top runners. The three leading runners, who were heading for the course record, were guided in the wrong direction and lost more than a minute (see e.g. here). In 2018, there were apparently also problems with the routing (see here).
According to the official results list, a total of 9497 runners finished the race. The results list (see here) also shows that the finishing time was increased from 6 to 7 hours (probably because of the temperatures).
Conclusion: Recommendable, but not suitable for personal best times
Here is the link to the official websiite of the Stockholm Marathon.
Pictures could be found on the German post.