Telenor Copenhagen Marathon 2018 much more than Race Records
Rise and shine, Sunday, May 13! Telenor Copenhagen Marathon 2018 filled the streets in the inner city with thousands of recreational runners tailing the elite. Prior to the start, the organizers together with Telenor hosted a conference on Digital Running in order to present some of the recent findings on running and some forecasts for the future of running.
New race record posted by William Morwabe from Kenya clocking 2.11.15, which is the fastest marathon time ever in Copenhagen. The record is an improvement of the existing record 2.12.10. Shasho Insermu from Ethiopia was the fastest woman with the time 2.32.17.
“Organizing a marathon is more than race records; it is an opportunity to focus on running related topics. That is why we in Sparta together with our digital partner; Telenor, the city of Copenhagen and Frederiksberg and Sport Event Denmark always look for new ways of putting running on the agenda,” says Dorte Vibjerg, CEO of the organizing running club, Sparta.
What happens in the minds of the winners, the elite runners and around 8,000 thousand recreational runners when they mentally and physically prepare for a marathon? Is it possible to monitor the brain activity during the race in order to understand factors as motivation and determination? The questions were asked at this year’s Digital Running Conference.
Running a marathon is not only a physical achievement but also a mental marathon, explained the brain scientist, Thomas Z. Ramsøy at the Digital Running conference staged on Monday. By monitoring the brain activity of runners exercising and competing gives an insight of the so-called ‘Runners High and Low’. So far, there is little insights of the psychological variations of the mental states during a marathon but research on the mental stages of running will initially help understand and enhance the running.
All runners of today’s marathon will most likely have been through the phases of highs and lows during their run and the images of focused faces. For the organizers the highs of today’s marathon were thus race records, a brilliant weather and the open window to the investigation of the mental and physical aspects of running.