Berlin Marathon
Katie and I leave for Berlin Tuesday night from Miami, via Paris. 10 hour flight to Paris, three hour layover, and two hour flight to Berlin. Flight to Paris was good as we got the upgrades to business after some sweating (and thanks to the incredible staff of AA at the Flagship check-in at MIA). Air France flight (called JOON) was good too and left on time. We get to the hotel pretty tired at 5:30pm. Dinner time near the hotel at an Italian restaurant, we walk to the Brandenburg gate for a night view and then return to the hotel at around 9pm to try to sleep.
This is another trip with our good friends at Marathon Tours. There are 600 of us on this trip. They set us up at the Ritz Carlton and we soon learn that Germans don’t like air conditioning….We set the temp to 62 degrees and it stays a comfy 78 the whole night (we sleep at 68 at home in MIA). We decide to open the windows and let the air come in which helps. It will be like this the rest of the week…….
I sleep pretty well anyway (not true for Katie, sorry!) and get up around 7:30am and go for a run (that is the best way to acclimate to the time zone change, by the way). 4 miles in the books, although slower than I had expected at the effort I was going…..doesn’t bode well for Sunday I think…or maybe I am tired.
Get the free breakfast at the hotel on Thursday and Katie and I are off to explore. We take a hop on and hop off bus, see remains of the Berlin Wall, East Berlin, etc. During our stay we also see the Holocaust Memorial, walk around the museum area and the other main drags of Berlin. We get a late lunch at the Einstein café and by the end of the day Thursday we feel we have seen all of the tourist attractions. We have dinner at a more typical German restaurant later that evening. Go to bed early because Friday Marathon tours has a ½ day guided tour planned that leaves us at the expo.
Expo
The Expo is at an old airport. The strangest layout for an Expo I have ever been too. Frankly, the strangest Expo ever.
Lots of booths, but hard to get to them so no shopping. I pre-paid for a finisher shirt, and the line was about one hour to get it (I could have bought it at same price in 5 minutes….don’t preorder it!!) – after 30 minutes in line, they say they are opening another stand outside, we run out there and are the first in line so we can finally leave……
Before that, I got my bib – and literally, that was all I got because I ordered the poncho (with no bag drop off). I explained to the lady I wanted the stuff in the bag and that I wanted a bag even though I was not dropping off. They refused to give me a bag – I have no idea why! It is just a clear bag – don’t give me the sticker for drop off, but give me a bag with the stuff in it….including the Marathon Book…..which I never got. I’ll have to wait to see if it shows up on Ebay one day…….What a zoo the expo was……
Anyway, go for the poncho option if your hotel is around the Potsdamer Platz. No need to drop anything off and will give you an extra 30 minutes of sleep time the morning before the race.
Katie and I walk back to the hotel from the Expo, about 2 miles. Beautiful day. At hotel, we proceed to do our favorite afternoon activity, a relaxing drink at the Ritz bar (which is in a terrible location, its like a dungeon, but the staff were terrific!). Dinner that evening was another Italian restaurant that was recommended to us. We walked over there (can’t remember the name) and it was just so-so. The nice thing about Berlin is that the dining costs are very reasonable, even for higher end restaurants. So if you like food, this is a good place to go and eat.
Saturday before Berlin Marathon
Another day of eating 550 grams of carbs…….I don’t look forward to this at all as my stomach can’t take it. After the morning 3 miler (much better time today than Thursday eating two breakfasts Katie and I go to Sloss Charlottenburg and walk around for three hours. Very nice park. We take an Uber back to catch the kids 5k race going on – it seems like there are a thousand kids. Very cool. And the parents don’t run with them (apparently there is a holding pen at the finish where your parents have to come find you, if they can….).
Later that day is the roller blading marathon. We catch this in the afternoon as we go to dinner. It looked super fun and there were a ton of racers. Dinner is with Marathon Tours, the standard (but good) pre race pasta dinner and the red wine was a reasonable 6 euros a glass (12 of the best carbs I got the whole day).
Race
Some things went good, some things went bad.
The good: The weather, not perfect but pretty close. The negative was the full sun, and not too much shade (although better than London). 59 to start and 70 when I finished, with 46% humidity. I walked over to the start blocks with too much time since I wasn’t checking in a bag (left at 7:45 for a 9:15 start, was at the blocks at 8am…..). Sat on the floor and waited, port o potty lines short in Corral B/C at that time. Ran a bit faster the first half (3:10 pace) that came to haunt me in the second half (3:20 finish).
The bad. I forgot to take my pre-race gel at the start. I was also hungry for some reason at the start. Not good. The sports drink was “Beester”. At every 5k starting at 9k. At that 9k fuel stop, I didn’t know where the Beester was – I saw a sign and grabbed a cup, and it was a cup full of WARM tea. That was it and I had to drink it for hydration. Ugh….Even though I supplemented fueling with more gels to replace the Gatorade on the typical course at every mile, it wasn’t enough and I was losing power at mile 20 instead of my more recent good races where I lasted until mile 22.5 or 23. The course was also tight so I had to weave way to much in order to pass folks in the first 15 miles.
The verdict. A good race, didn’t get the 3:13 I was looking for but 3:20 still keeps me in the hunt for the last two races. If I can average 3:20 the last two, I get my A goal. But at this point, it really is all about finishing (I am getting mentally tired of the training and its never-ending imposition on my time – there is less time to be with the family and work still clocks in at 60 hours a week making it mentally stressful at times….). Berlin was also memorable because I earned my Six Star Finisher Medal (Chicago 17 and NYC 16). But I deferred getting the medal until NYC.
Of all the WMMs, I would rank Berlin last – the crowd support was great, but the city sites aren’t historic enough or different enough. It is like running in a beautiful modern city, but nothing distinctive, except that epic finish through the Brandenberg gate, and the start, which is also super cool. It is also complicated to get there from Miami, although next year American Airlines will offer a direct flight to Berlin from Philly which will make it easier to get to.
