Berlin Is Done

What a city, what a race. There's much to say about the Berlin Marathon, but no time (or energy!) to do it justice now. I'll just note that on a very warm day I nailed my nutrition and hydration, got in a good groove and the kilometers seemed to sail by, well, not effortlessly, but in good order.

3:09:54

That's a PR by 8 minutes and 58 seconds.

And check this out: I ran nearly even splits on the front and back half of the race!

1st half: 1:34:24
2nd half: 1:35:30

More in a couple of days. Now, a Budweiser awaits (the real one, imported from Czech Republic).

My results are here.

Marathon Eve

We walked around the neighborhood a bit, picking up some bread and cheese and a few other items at the Saturday Friedrichshain market, and hit a little T-shirt and tchotchkes joints to load up for folks back home. Now just hanging out and waiting. Let's get this race going! That's my attitude. It's going to be sunny and on the warm side, but with a 9 a.m. start I should be done before the temperature nudges too far into the 70s. Still don't know what the drink is they'll be offering at the aid stations. I'm going to carry two gels, even though I hate carrying anything in a race. I need to make sure I get some calories in me during the race. Here's one thing I'm incredibly excited about: running the streets of Berlin. It's an amazing city and the marathon will take me through, like, a dozen neighborhoods. We'll start near where Reagan told Gorbachev to tear down that wall, travel down Karl-Marx-Allee and pass the spot where Kennedy declared himself a Berliner, or a jelly donut, or something. Anyway, I'll run it hard and it will, I'm sure, be an experience I'll never forget.

I Like This

Open the graphic in another window and you'll see that the Berlin Marathon richly deserves its reputation as flat. The one sustained climb is from the 12.2 mile mark to 16.9 miles—and that's from 121 feet elevation to 171 feet, an elevation gain of 50 feet over 4.7 miles. There may be heartbreak in Berlin, but it won't be a hill.