On My Way to Berlin

This is it! I’m on my way to Berlin to race the marathon. Finally! I have been wanting to do this race for a long time now, and I am excited to get out on the roads to see if I have another pr in me in my 21st marathon. I have been racing marathons now for 10 years, and each race brought its own challenges. Even though Berlin is known to be the fastest course in the world, I do expect the race this weekend to be extremely hard. 

I plan to once again be pretty ambitious with my pace, and get towed along to a sub 2:10. I have made this same attempt many times now, and each time I have failed. Sometimes my failures resulted in pr’s; I’ve run 2:11 4 times after going out on 2:08-2:10 pace. Other times I have suffered over the 2nd half and fade to 2:17s, 2:18s, and once a DNF. I am proud of all the races I have finished regardless of whether I met my goals or not. But knowing that I have come so close is what keeps driving me to try again, and hope that one of these race will result in a spectacular result.

My pace group with have 2 other athletes attempting to crack the sub 2:10 barrier, with 2 rabbits taking us through 20k and 30k as best as they can. Over the past 7 weeks I have changed my GPS watch to track my kilometer splits rather than miles to get myself to learn better pacing over those intervals. I have also been doing many of my workouts on a flat route down in Camp Verde 50 miles south of Flagstaff and almost 4000ft lower. This has resulted in many great workouts, much better than I’ve had in a while, which have indicated to me that I am prepared to run a sub 2:10 marathon.

Mentally I am ready to go and I am confident that my legs will cooperate. I have trained them well for this. Now, all the work leading into the race is done and all I have left to do is wait for my flight to board. I am sitting and writing this in Phoenix awaiting my delayed flight to London where I’ll connect to Berlin. Just a 9 1/2 hour flight, followed by 2 hours of waiting, then another 2 hour flight, and I’ll arrive at 8pm local time in Berlin. By then I’ll be eager to get my race bib, get a quick run on the treadmill, and then get to bed. I am very excited to get this started.

Below is a list of the top competitors in Berlin. A lot of guys at 2:06 and under. Its going to be fast! See you in Berlin!