Unlike the perfect Californian weather in Goleta, when I got up really early to take the chance of getting a ticket for this years’ marathon in Berlin (there were only 2000 left that were released for online registration at 5 P.M. CET I believe) it was surprisingly cold for late September in Berlin. If you know me you’ll recall I prefer warm or even hot weather to everything under 15°C where you have to wear real (and comparatively heavy) clothes to run a long distance. Nevertheless us two runners and our support team took an early train into Berlin and were eager to experience this big event. We got through perfectly and better than expected, because there were not many tourists traveling so early on a Saturday and most participants seemed to arrive from the city center or the east/south part of Berlin.
The start was incredibly slow, but the atmosphere was already nice, because there were just so many people and it was really international with every third participant from Denmark in my perception (they seemed to all wear the same shirts with a Danish flag).
Unfortunately I made the same mistake as last time in Santa Barbara – I just enjoyed the atmosphere too much and wasn’t paying attention to the speed (or maybe I just wasn’t prepared well enough as well). It felt absolutely nice the first half, but I just used my reserves too fast so that from about km 30 on it was a little painful, but the feeling of running through the Brandenburg Gate at the end made up for that. Also there were so many fun participants (just have a look at random race pictures and you will see what I mean :D).
I was hoping to finish below 3:30h, but made it in 03:39:54h (11.49 km/h), at least a slightly improved personal record and still room for improvement 🙂
Previous competitions:
- 10km “City-Nachtlauf” in Berlin on July 31st 2010 in 0:41:43 hours (14.4 km/h)
- 22.1 km “Stadtlauf” in Berlin on August 28th 2011 in 1:33:00 hours (13.6 km/h)
- 51km “Harzquerung” in Wernigerode on April 28th 2012 in 5:41:31 (9 km/h)
- 10km “IGA-Lauf” in Berlin on May 20th 2012 in 0:44:45 hours (13.4 km/h)
- 42 km “Santa Barbara International Marathon” in California on November 11th 2012 in 3:42:06 (11.4 km/h)
- 51 km “Harzquerung” in Wernigerode on April 27th 2013 in 5:52:36 hours (8.7 km/h)