micke-midlife on September 22nd, 2009

berlin_marathon_stickerThe disappointment still sits deep, it’s an empty feeling when things turn out this way. It was long way during preparations, 4300km when quantifying it. The anticipation before the big event and a good result. A lot of time and yes also money was invested and there’s not much that’s there to take away. And yes, as a friend put it “being pissed off is a feeling just as valid as being truly happy.” And although it’s a bit difficult just right now, you’re right by saying that it’s best to raise the head again and try to look ahead.  But apart from this, the Berlin Marathon has a lot of good stories to tell as well! Stefano did a personal best, again! So did Kari and by a slightly wider margin! The little one showed some serious talent for track and field and the whole event was surprisingly well organized.

To organize a marathon event for 40.000 runners is not an every day task. There aren’t many other runs of equal size around, New York seems equal in size and maybe London comes close. For that amount of people the event was well organized. Of course, common sense says that planning some extra time does indeed make sense (aim for arriving in the starting zone 40mins ahead of the start) and selecting the right entrance helps avoiding traffic jams in the changing areas. We didn’t do those things and were a bit in a hurry in the end, but it worked out.

Quite a proud daddy I was when the little princess gave her show on the 25m track of the Adidas activity booth at the marathon exhibition on Friday. Only once shown how to use the sprinter’s starting block, she got so excited about it and didn’t stop before we had to force her to - after about 10-12 runs and a personal best of 4.54 sec.

Other personal bests also from close running friends. Stefano, my brother in arms in this project ran the best marathon of his life - again. Already in Rotterdam in the spring, he set a personal best of 2:31:40h, he improved it now in Berlin by 38 seconds - to a 2:31:02h. It doesn’t sound much, but it is. It was 25 degrees Celsius warm and Haile Gebreselassie was roughly 3 minutes slower than last year. Stefano was 38 seconds faster than last time, i.e. simple logic: Stefano’s better than Haile.

And then of course Kari, a colleague from work, he also improved. Take Stefano’s improvement in seconds, divide it by two and write MINUTES behind it. Now that’s an improvement! From 3:32 to 3:13h. Now, his problem is going to be, after having run a superb marathon like Berlin, doing the next one in Turku, Espoo or Orimattila is going to be challanging, not as flat, not as straight, not 1 million people cheering. The options are narrowing down.

In case you’re considering Berlin as a marathon destimation, just do it and see for yourself. It’s great!

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