Today we reached the halfway point with an excellent race in at the Site at Lørenskog near Oslo, Norway. Today was an early start for me with a taxi to the site at 06:45 in order to meet up with Rønnaug Vinje, Jeanette Dejligbjerg and Hans Palmgren who were the local oragnising team for today's race. The early start was to help get the route marked out and accurately measured, a task which took about 90 minutes to complete.
This having been done it was time to get the start and finish area arranged. Without any doubt, the Lørenskog team win the "biggest start and finish banner" award so far with a massive, 10 metre wide inflatable branded banner...this banner had been used for the Oslo Marathon last weekend....and if it was good enough for 20,000 athletes there, it was certainly acceptable for us to use today ! 
The race kicked off a few moments ahead of the scheduled start time of 10:15 with Kevin supported by 4 guys from the site who raced with him for much of today's race. The area around the site at Lørenskog is beautiful...forests and lakes and some nice residential areas to run through.....it also had some added features that have been absent over the first 3 races.....hills !!!! The route headed out of the site along some nice pathways and down a steep hillside before picking up a very nice 4.7 km loop around the town.
Rønnaug and Jeanette who had planned the course had arranged for the first aid and refreshment station to be located next to a very picturesque swimming lake in the town which proved to be a very pleasant location from which to watch the race. The loop did contain one quite steep hill that needed to be ascended.....okay for the first 4 laps but increasingly hard work for the last 4 laps of the 8 loops.
By the end of lap 6, Kevin had run out of pace makers and was running on his own. At the end of lap 7, Kevin dropped his bombshell....."I have no idea of the way back to the site, I will need someone to show me" he said causally as he ran past. Gulp.....I looked at Rønnaug, Jeanette and Hans.....I was the one with running gear so it was down to me ! 
At least I had 30 minutes to get changed and stretch before Kevin back into view after his last lap and we set off on the final 20 minutes climbing back up the steep hill to be met by a large crowd from the site cheering Kevin to his finish in a very respectable time of 4 hours, 5 minutes and 48 seconds. The Norwegians were disappointed that Kevin's time was slower than yesterday in Sweden but immediately identified the hills as the cause....some good rivalry between the Scandinavians !!!!
Once again it was a quick round of thank you's and goodbye's before Kevin and I headed back to the hotel for the ice bath. Today's ice bath won the "coldest so far" prize as the hotel provided the largest quantity of ice so far by quite some margin !After the bath it was back on the road again, off to Oslo Airport for our flights to Paris and Marathon 5.
Distance travelled today: 1450 km
Total distance travelled: 5175 km
Distance run by Kevin today: 42.2 km
Total distance run by Kevin: 168.8 km
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