Hey there,
the Berlin marathon, edition #2022 is gone and fine so. I’m happy I was able to participate, as some surprises came up during the journey. Obviously my training was not what I had hoped for – mainly due to the personal reasons.
Let’s start with the day before my journey to Berlin was supposed to start. I had finished the week full of work and was happy to get a little timeout in Berlin. I had to shop some groceries and decided to go by bike. That turned out to be a mistake as I had a minor accident due to a slippery road. There was not enough grip, when I switched to the bicycle line and the bike dived to its right side. I hurt my knee and my left wrist, but fortunately it didn’t seem too bad so I decided to take the train to Berlin next morning.
In the morning my knee was a bit better so I was confident I could start on Sunday. The wrist felt worse, but when you are running, you don’t need your hands that much, right? The trip to Berlin was nice and without any hassle. In Berlin I met my friends at the central station and we could take a ride to the old airport of Tempelhof. I must say it was visible that after a few years of Covid 19 pandemic there would be a lot of participants. The marathon organization in Berlin has previously been like a smooth machine, but this time the machine was goughing a bit – information about where one should go was not obvious all the time, but we got our bibs, chips and other stuff.
After the mandatory preparations we headed to our AirBnB accommodation in Lichtenberg and had a brief rest. In the evening we had a proper supper and hit the bed pretty early.
After a not so well rested night, the mobile triggered an alert and it was time for a quick breakfast and get to the city centre. Fortunately our flat had a great public transportation alternatives: S-Bahn, U-Bahn, a couple of Trams and Buses running pretty near. The U-Bahn was the best alternative due to the traffic restrictions and we as participants also got free public transportation tickets for several days, which is one of the greatest things I’ve seen, when participating a marathon. Huge thanks for this!
We were early on the starting spot, but when it comes to the number of runners out there, it was a really wise thing to do. As having started from the bottom of the grid, we had about 30 minutes after the start of the group of elite runners, but finally it was our turn to hit the streets of Berlin.
I and the friends of mine had decided to run as group, because none of us wanted to reach a personal best. If it would be possible, it would be nice to run the whole route under 4 hours. There are so many runners on the route that one really has to pay attention and be careful. It turned out that we ran with a pace of about 5.55 mins/km or a bit slower. My knee didn’t hurt fortunately, but the lack of long runs became evident as the race went on.
Slowly and surely I felt I couldn’t keep up the pace. The mates would have surely made it under 4 hours, but they decided to provide me support so together we went. I was a bit disappointed to notice that there was not sports drink available at every drink station, but I guess it would not have had an enormous impact on the end result.
Painful it became, but the experience of almost 30 marathons helps in the end so if not anything drastic happens, it is probable to finish the race. I was happy to reach the Brandenburger Tor and be in a passable condition. Not a great result having consumed over 4.20 in the end, but a finish anyway. The next marathon will the number 30 for me and it would be nice to be able to really run out there.
After the marathon the first thought was that I would like to be here in 2023 as well. On the following week I placed myself to the lottery and hope to have some luck to be able to start also next year. I love you Berlin, hope to see you soon!