Almost as Strange as Me

Initially posted to my FB page with pictures but posting here to add it to my collection of race reports.

Finishing Time: 4:27:52 (my third slowest time but over an hour faster than the Athens Marathon last year that I ran/walked injured)

Registered: 55,000 (This race was HUGE).

Thank you everyone for the well wishes this weekend. It was not the race I hoped for, but it was still an epic experience! The organizers do a terrific job of hyping each starting wave, and I cried a little before the gun went off because I was full of excitement and gratitude to be running this cool marathon. There were moments in the race where we ran by major sights like the Victory Column and the Gedachnis Kirche that reminded me that I was running in an interesting city. Running through the Brandenberg Gate to the finish line was as cool as I had dreamed it would be. Afterwards, as I trundled back to my hotel wearing my medal and race poncho, random Berliners kept congratulating me (in German) on finishing the marathon. I found that really unexpected and touching. 

Below is an exhaustive and someone TMI list of the things that stand out from this marathon – good and bad.

1.        Pacing: I started out strong and on pace but by around 13km, I began to feel a heaviness in my legs that suggested I was tiring – this surprised me as this was the sort of tiredness I would expect around 28km. By 15km, I had stopped racing and focused on just running to finish. This was due to both the heat and the water stations. I also am wondering if I really overestimated myself in training and was not as strong or as fit as I thought I was. This is where I have to do some thinking to plan for what to do next in training. I think that with my hamstring injury, I was cautious about not doing too much strength training on my posterior chain so as not to overload it while ramping up my running. The biggest triumph of this marathon build is the fact that I didn’t get injured and I’m not injured after the marathon either. This means after a bit of recovery, I can get back into running without having to focus on rehab and recovery. 

2.        The Blue Racing Lines: this turned out to be the most efficient marathon I have ever raced because I was able to see and stay somewhat close to the race lines marking the course. I didn’t always run directly on them, but I made the decision to stay close to them where possible and in the end, I only ran around .5 km more than 42.2! In contrast, when I ran Philly two years ago, I ran 42.99km! I really enjoyed having them as a guide because it took away some of the thinking and looking around whenever the racecourse began to turn this way and that. 

3.        The weather: I know this also had an impact on how I felt and on my overall pace. I have run 8 marathons, and this was the hottest. Things began warming up noticeably during the second hour of my run as the temps climbed, and big portions of the race were on segments of broad unshaded avenues, which makes things feel even hotter. The ideal temperature for a marathon is typically between 35-55F (2-12C) but the temperature when I started was 72F (22F) rising to 76F (24F) before beginning to gradually drop again after 14.00. Just as comparison, I ran my personal best 2 years ago in Philly and the temperature at race start was 3C (high 30sF). Since Sunday, I’ve seen lots of race reports and videos on YouTube and Instagram from other runners, 100% of whom struggled with the heat in some way. Almost no one reported a personal record and those who did were far off their goal time. Many people like me had that dead legs feeling at some point in the race and switched from racing to just finishing. This included a runner gunning for a 2:39 and finishing in 2:59 (still sub 3 but 20 minutes slower), runners aiming for sub 3 hours and finishing in 3:15 or 3:20 and runners like me, aiming for sub 4 hours and finishing in 4:20 to 4:40. All this data is reassuring to me because it means it wasn’t just in my head and I wasn’t mentally tough enough and gave up too early. 

4.        Water Stations: I actually missed one of the early water stations because I did not realize the water came first and what followed was fruit, Marten (a sports drink) and warm tea. (Berlin is notorious for its tea situation – this might be a German thing because I’ve never encountered tea in a marathon or half marathon in any other country I’ve run in.)  None of these were good for dumping on my head to cool off either.  Fortunately, I ran most of the way with my handheld, so I had water on me at all times, but it made me extra cautious to get over quickly to the water stations when I approached them. It wasn’t as hot and as humid as Maryland in the summer, but with it feeling warmer, the water stations became extra important, and I started drinking water and dumping water on my head. I think this helped me to finish the run but it’s also another big reason why I slowed down so much. The water stations were chaos and there was no way to keep running through them safely, so I made the early decision to walk the water stations. Part of what made them treacherous was not only the wet ground, but the heaps of discarded crunchy plastic cups on the ground. In some places there were piles of them you had to wade through just to get to the water tables and they extended for a good long while beyond the end of the water stations. These were tripping hazards and it was just easier and safer to walk through these than to trip and fall. By the second half of the course, water stations came every 2 kilometers, and I made sure I got water and walked through every single one except the final one. The walking was good for keeping me going but it also meant my pace was very up and down and that my shoes were soaking wet for the entire second half of the race. 

5.        Toilets: TMI – but it’s part of endurance sports and can really affect your race time. Berlin has a reputation for long queues for the toilets before the race start, and therefore a high number of people shitting in the woods/Tiergarten on the way to the starting gates. The good news is that I saw NONE of that, mostly just dudes pissing behind trees, but you get that in any race. I managed to get into a toilet after standing in line for 20 minutes that was still pretty clean about an hour before my race and then when I got to the starting area, I saw a whole bunch of toilets lining the course with almost no wait and was able to go once more 15 minutes before the race began, which was perfect.  I suspect most of the shitting in the woods was happening in the first starting group with the fastest runners. In race recap videos, I saw a lot of them struggled to get into their starting gates in time because of the long lines and very narrow entry point, meaning a lot of them wouldn’t have seen the toilets along the starting line unless they got in an hour early. This was less of an issue with my starting group much further back since we began a whole hour later. Toilets on the course were plentiful, but much like the water stations, they were chaos for people further back because no one is cleaning them during the race. Around 28km, I made the calculated decision to use the toilet. I had been drinking a lot of water and although I didn’t need to go urgently, I figured I would by the end of the race, and I didn’t know how long it would take me to get to toilets AFTER the finish line. (I was right to plan for this because it was a long walk and there were long lines there.) Unfortunately, all the toilets were full, so I found myself waiting a minute or more and just as the one in front of me opened, a man ran off the course and ran into my toilet and slammed the door, not even looking at me. This had never happened to me in a race before, and I was just thankful I did not need to go urgently. The next stall opened but the man stepping out told me it was a mess, and I didn’t want to use it. I looked over his shoulder and immediately got back on the course with plans to use a toilet at the next water stop. This next stop was successful, and I was able to find a vacant non-disastrous toilet right away. 

6.        The Brandenburg Gate and Finish: Was epic! I tossed my handheld water bottle around 40km and just focused on picking up my legs faster to finish and look strong. Turning the corner onto Unter den Linden where I could see the Gate up ahead gave me energy and I started smiling. It was so cool to run between the columns and then finally only the finishing blue carpet and under the finish line. I had no idea what my time was but I was so glad to be finished. My legs were TIRED and I just wanted to stop and sit down, but we needed to keep walking through the chute to get our finisher medals (with the famous German flag ribbon) then further on to get water and a bag of snacks including apple, banana, a Kinder snack, a cup of Erdinger alcohol free beer, then an additional 300 meters to get the post-race poncho I had ordered before exiting the finisher area so I could sit down, enjoy my “beer” and take some selfies. 

7.        Small Things that Went Wrong but I Managed Anyway: The night before a big race, I like to eat pasta as part of my carbo loading and I had scouted out a restaurant that I had eaten at the night before really close to my hotel. However, the night before the marathon, they had had an emergency and shut down their kitchen, so I was left looking for another place to eat. By this time other nearby Italian restaurants were packed. Fortunately, there was an Indian restaurant just around the corner from my hotel and I loaded up on rice, naan and chana masala. I’m not sure if this made a difference in my run the next day because it was not part of the routine, but it’s a new lesson for me to make sure I have a backup restaurant just in case. A second small glitch concerned my music. I have a running playlist I listen to on my long runs but it stopped playing for some reason relatively early in the race. This might have coincided with when I started dumping water on myself. My phone was in a pocket between my shoulder blades in my bra and I didn’t bother investigating what was going on. There was enough noise on the course that I often couldn’t hear my own music anyway. 

8.        Running a Marathon Solo: For every marathon I have run in the past, I have had at least one person cheering me on or supporting me. This was great for pre and post race photos and moral support. But it also meant that if I collapsed or injured myself during the marathon, there was someone I could turn to for a little extra help getting me home from the race or (in the worst possible scenario) hospital. This is the first marathon I ran completely solo, and I did it in a country I don’t live in. My ability to get back from the racecourse to my hotel afterwards was also a consideration in how I paced myself to finish. The last thing I wanted was to collapse from heat exhaustion and to then have to navigate health decisions in a new medical system in that condition. That didn’t happen. I ran a tough but smart race, and I managed everything on my own. Even though my feet were tired after 42km, I was still able to walk the further 3 kilometers (2 miles) to get to the S-bahn and get back to my hotel.