In the beginning of August the Berlin Marathon starting confirmation was sent out by email. Since the SCC, the organizer, sent out earlier commercial emails, as ads for products and services sponsoring the event, the email almost was victim to a quick Shift+DEL move. Fortunately the attachement with the interesting file name 24873.pdf was so pronounced and visible in the Thunderbird email application, that the fingers hesitated for a couple of seconds that made all difference.
Reading through the email in more detail and opening the attachment revealed that 24873 is the starting number assigned to me in the Berlin Marathon. With 40.000 runners on the starting line - haven’t yet figured out if there are 40.000 runners alone or starters all in all, i.e. counting in all skaters and “power” walkers (one could see here a paradox in the latter term as such). Anyway, the starting number 24873 is easily understood to be in the latter half of the starting field.
Although nowadays you get at all bigger events the net time of your run, this means the time it takes for you to cross the starting line is deducted. But the trouble with starting far back is that often the pace behind the starting line isn’t considerably better than before it, i.e. it’s going slow for the first couple of kilometers. Jumping left and right and overtaking as good as possible is the worst you can do. It eats up strength you need between 30 and 40km. The “wall” will come eventually, believe me.
A quick email to the organizers clarified things. We’re earmarked for starting block B. It still means to be there in the starting area about 30-40 mins before the start. But all is good, good, good!
Today’s training: morning 9.5km recovery run; afternoon 7.6km, 1.8km, 1.8km marathon pace runs, 29km altogether for the whole day.
Tags: berlin-marathon
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