Some of my Morgantown friends were able to run the Berlin Marathon with me! We shared an AirBnB for a few days
Me and 2 other people were on a group team
One person had a qualifying time
One person joined us for vacation
We carpooled to the Pittsburgh airport to fly to Iceland, which led to Berlin
We flew with Icelandair since it was the most direct and cheapest flight
We got to the expo at the perfect time since it was ridiculously crowded when we left. There were hundreds of people waiting outside when we were leaving
The expo was at Flughafen Tempelhof, aka the former airport of Berlin
After we showed our passports to a volunteer, we had a blue wristband put on us. The wristband was important since we needed it to run the marathon
I ran the 5K the day before just as a shakeout run! And there were (of course) tons of runners, so it was hard to run and navigate!
The Brandenburg Gate and the “Kleiner Stern" was the start of the marathon. The start times were dependent on the corral of the runners
People in corrals A-D started at 9:15, corrals E-F at 9:45, corrals GHJ at 10:10, and corral K was 10:40
Since there were over 50,000 runners, it was extremely hard to run since I was always surrounded by other people
I constantly had to zig-zag between the other runners
There were times when parts of the road were blocked off, so we had some bottleneck situations. While dealing with the bottlenecks, it was harder to run in between people
The weather was 10/10! I have zero complaints about the weather and scenery!
I highly recommend this race as a destination race! Since the field size is huge, it is very difficult to PR
Race Website: Berlin Marathon
Marathon Pictures!