Berlin 2023 race report

This was my tenth marathon (including 3 ironman marathons) and something special was in the air.

Another goal

I signed up for Berlin after finding out my friend Brian would be going there and running. At first we were only going there to cheer him on and catch up after not seeing each other for several years. Then, after a bit of contemplation (2 minutes) I decided I was going to race as well. Being Berlin, one of the six major marathons, getting in would not be easy. Having not run a marathon in 8 years, meant I would not have any sort of qualifying time and Berlin is super hard to qualify for anyways. This meant I needed to run for a charity or find another way in. I ended up finding a great charity with “Get kids Going”, that supports providing disabled kids with wheelchairs so that they can participate in sports. This felt like the perfect match in that I could run Berlin and at the same time give back to others. The only challenge was that I needed to get in shape. 

A pretty good base

Before Berlin, I was fortunate to have another goal that I used as a base for the race. This event was an Ironman 70.3 event. I followed a fantastic training plan from myprocoach and hit my goal perfectly. During all my training for this event, I noticed that my running was getting better and better. I felt like I could run faster than I had ever run in my life and I was super excited to test my legs in a marathon again. I finished my 70.3 in July and stupidly pushed a bit too hard just a week after on a long bike ride. This meant that my legs ended up taking much longer to recover and I could not earnestly start my marathon training until August. I signed up for another myprocoach training plan and dove in with 8 weeks to go. I ended up only missing one training run, and that was in the first week as I was still recovering from the ironman. My last few weeks, I was running the best I had run in my life and felt amazing every long run. Now it was just to taper and race.

The most difficult of tapers

The last taper week started with catching my first cold in over a year, a cold that stuck with me through race day. At first it was just the regular scratchy throat, but later it progressed to a full burning throat and coughing. I stuck with my run schedule, but listened closely to my body, being careful not to push too much. This was not a taper I would enjoy, but I had no choice but to push through.

Later in the week we found out our beloved dog Dexter had stage 4 cancer and we had to make the difficult decision of saying goodbye. This was by far the most difficult thing I had faced in years, and we made a difficult decision as a family, knowing the choice was best for him, but the timing was far too quick for us to process and deal with the loss. Dexter was more than a pet, he was a major part of our family.

The next day we got ourselves together the best we could and boarded our train to the airport, only to find out that Eurowings canceled our flight with 3 hours notice. No options were available to fly to Berlin before the race so we had to divert to Frankfurt. This would have been manageable had the rebooked Lufthansa flight been on time, but it was delayed for two hours which meant we missed an earlier train by 15 minutes and had to wait in Frankfurt for 5 hours.

The only option available after that was an overnight train that left at 12:55 AM. I love traveling by train and normally it is not an issue, but this was one of those trains where everyone was drunk, the car smelled like stale beer, the lights were on all night, and all seats faced each other so you were fighting for leg space with those across from you. In addition we had to transfer to another train at 4:45 AM. Needless to say, the sleep was not great and we arrived at Berlin Central station at 6:30AM the day before the race.

At least we were in Berlin!

We were finally here, and the only option was to smile and appreciate the fact that I could still make my race. We tried sleeping for a few hours at the hotel but the adrenalin of the race and the timing of number pick up meant we needed to get to registration. We headed to the expo and the energy was amazing. There were so many runners and the enormity of the event finally hit me. There were nothing but smiles and thousands of people everywhere. This was all going to be OK I thought!

Race Day - Sunday morning

Somehow, I ended up getting a great night’s sleep on Saturday night and I woke up full of energy and well rested. I ignored my cold, telling myself that this was my day and nothing was going to stop me. My ironman 70.3 in July had given me the blueprint for eating which was a huge help for this race. I didn’t have to think about what to eat and there was no stress wondering if my pre-race meal would fuel me for the day. My wife had carried all the essentials with us and purchased a few others locally. My special oatmeal mix(a Kipchoge favorite) was perfect and the salty hard boiled eggs helped to fill me up. I drank 2 cups of coffee to get things moving and lots of water as well. I mixed up some sports drink to sip on as I walked the 3 km to the start corral.

We stepped out of the hotel into a crisp but cloudy morning. Our street had several hotels and there were several runners milling about outside and inside. There was a definite buzz in the air as everyone had their own nervous energy and pre-race game planning. I stopped and re-tied my shoes several times on the first part of the walk, dealing with my own mental challenges. Everything HAD to be just right. I felt a bit like the pied piper as we walked to the race, as our initial group of two turned to 4, then 6, then 30 and eventually a huge crowd that walked together towards the start area. We stopped for a picture in front of the Brandenburg gate and then I left my wife and headed to the staging area.

Once I went through the controlled area, I was greeted by the typical sites of runners eating bananas and stretching. What I didn’t see a lot of were porta potties. Wanting to make that one last stop before the race, I ended up waiting in line 30 minutes for a single porta potty that was near what I thought was the final short walk to the start corral. As the start time got nearer this wait was agonizing, as I had no idea what to expect in getting to my start group. I had heard stories of others missing their start and this was not how I wanted my race day to start. Eventually my turn came and I was fortunate to be out of there with about 25 minutes left before the starting gun. The walk from there ended up taking 15 minutes (with a few short jogs to speed up my arrival). On the way, there were runners peeing everywhere in the woods, obviously having the same porta potty stress that I had faced. I followed the mass of runners and we squeezed ourselves through tight spots in the woods until we eventually found the tight entrance into the start corral. Phew! I was finally there and ready to go. The runners streamed in and eventually start area C was packed like sardines. A few spots in front of me, I spotted a yellow shirt and saw the acronym SRR (Somerville Road Runners) and I realized that it was my friend Brian. We were supposed to meet up before the race, but my travel nightmare ruined that so we had decided to try to find each other in the start corral. Luckily, we found each other with enough time to say good luck before we were off. Now, it was time!

The starting gun went off and it felt like forever before we finally heard the familiar beep that you hear when you cross the timing mat. The race was on! My legs were moving and I felt like I was floating on air as if shot out of a cannon. All of the training, all of the anticipation, and all of the trouble of the past week was now behind me and I was finally putting those rested legs to work. The first beautiful site on the course was the victory tower, and the runners split in both directions as we ran around the rotary, similar to what you see in the Tour de France. There were so many runners everywhere that it was hard to even look at my watch at this point, but eventually I snuck a peak to see that I was quite a bit slower than my planned pace. My mind quickly started with the problems. How would I handle running 30 seconds faster than this? Faster than my training pace, and faster than I had ever run in a marathon. Would I be OK? I shut my mind off and just focused on getting my pace down to 6:45. “Just hit the numbers”, I told myself and don’t go out too fast like you always do.

Fans were cheering loudly everywhere and it was so hard not to overdo it early in the race but I kept to my number. Even though I felt like I was getting passed more than I would like so early. I crossed the 5K marker at 21:10 (24 something on the race clock) and I started to do the math. 8 X 21:10 = 169:20 + 2 more KM (8:30) = 177:50 or 2:57:50. OK, on pace, now I just need to do this a little over 8 more times.

This is really where the mental game of a race starts to take shape. You may start to think, “How will I be as fast at the end of the race as I am on fresh legs at the beginning?”. Or you can start to give yourself excuses for not being able to make it like, I have a cold and I have had a tough week and not enough rest, it is OK to not hit my goal as long as I finish. NO, I was not going to think like this, my only focus was on my number, 6:45. Many people think that running is only a matter of training the legs and putting in the time. Yes, this is important, but there is a mental component as well. Each run is a chance to train our mental skills. Sometimes it is as simple as getting out the door on the days where you feel like staying home. Other times it can be building up that mental strength when you want to stop during a long run but you push yourself through it. I have heard it called mental callous, and this is so true. Mental callous is the barrier between you quitting and you succeeding. I read David Goggins "Can't hurt me" ** this winter and he is the master of mental callous. I learned so much from reading his book, and I took that with me into every training. I worked on building mental callous every day, and one of the most important parts of my mental training was running a negative split. A negative split is when you run the second half of a race faster than the first part. For every one of my long rungs, I forced myself to achieve a negative split. I was building mental callous in knowing that I could finish a race strong. This race was NOT going to be any different.

The marathon course is a flat course and this also helped me in feeling great as I continued rolling through the historic streets of Berlin. I was happy to not be wearing headphones as it was beautiful to hear the rhythmic sounds of hundreds of feet slapping the ground in unison. The crowds were great with so many kids holding out their hands for high fives. I love slapping high fives with these kids as it gives me so much energy and always puts a smile on my face. I try to smile as much as I can during a race. Smiling helps me to appreciate the moment and acknowledge that this is something that I wanted to do. I chose to be here, I worked hard for this moment, I damn well better appreciate it. Smiling also helps in that people tend to cheer for you more. The crowds like to see happy runners and it helps them to get into it. Besides smiling, I also like to thank the volunteers on course. They don’t have to be here, but they are, and they are dealing with pushy narcissist athletes who mostly only speak out when things go wrong, not when they go right (which they most often do). Thanking these volunteers usually makes them smile and also gives me energy. Lastly, I get energy from cheering on other runners. Especially at the end of a race where their energy stores are low and that little bit of encouragement can help drive them closer to the finish line. We are all one big running family and it is way more fun to succeed together than it is to see someone fail. I have been helped countless times from the community and I love to give back any way I can. I pat on the back or some words of encouragement help others and also give me energy. Speaking of energy, I was consistent taking gels every 45 minutes (and one stroop waffle). This turned out to be a good strategy as I never ran low on energy the entire race and I was able to get the carbs in when needed.

Racing my own race

Before the 10 km mark, I found myself getting passed by the 3 hour run pacers. In other races this might have thrown me for a loop but I trusted my watch, reviewed my pace at every 5 km marker and stuck to my plan. For some reason these pacers were running 10-15 seconds per mile under pace(faster) at the beginning of the race. I felt bad for some of the runners blindly following them as if this was going to be the perfect strategy. The biggest problem with these pace groups were the sheer amount of runners that were in them and how tightly packed they were. Because I tended to be in the vicinity of this group for most of the race, the course also seemed super packed and you had to be aware of everything at all times. Where this caused the biggest difficulty, was the water stations. Each water station was made even more difficult by the sheer amount of people crisscrossing each other as they tried to get their water cups. I tended to jump in towards the end of the water stations, as there would be less turmoil but this could also turn out badly if I got in too late and missed my water. The race also used hard plastic cups which made drinking more difficult (no squeezing the cup closed and sipping) and I ended up wearing most of my water as opposed to drinking it. I was also really disappointed in the amount of cups just thrown randomly on the course as opposed to throwing them off in the waste areas. The water areas tended to be really slippery due to the amount of spillage and the crushed hard plastic cups on the ground everywhere. Because of this, I tended to skip more water stations than I normally would as there was a huge risk in each station. This was one of the reasons I went with the Saucony Endorphin Pro 3 ** as my shoe of choice for this race as I knew they could handle wet conditions well.

Throughout most of the race I would see Brian in front of me or just off to the side, he was also trying to run a sub 3, but it was best that we both ran our own race and not try to run together. Eventually we were side by side at one point and we shared a few words of encouragement before breaking off on our own again. Each 5 km marker came and went and the half way point was in sight. I told my wife I would be on the right hand side of the road around this area, so I would do my best to get to the right whenever I could. This proved to be really tricky with the amount of zig zagging required to navigate around the various runners on the course. In the first 10K, I had been passed by many runners, many of which went out too fast. Now I was the one passing them, which meant a great deal of zig zagging and always paying attention to not get stuck in their pace. In the end, I passed 1,200 runners in the last 30 km of the race. Unfortunately, all of this zigzagging added another half of a kilometer (.3 miles) to my distance according to my watch. This is the equivalent of 3 seconds per mile! Definitely something that I can improve on in future races.

Half way there, some extra strength ...

The halfway point hit and I was 50 seconds under my three hour pace. My legs felt amazing, ready to push the second half and finally get the negative split I was always aiming for. I also had a secret weapon for the second half of the race. For Berlin, every runner gets a non removable wrist band that allows them entry into all of the restricted areas of the race. When mine was cut the cut was not clean and I had these strands of string hanging off my wrist band. Instead of cutting them off, I left them because they reminded me of our dog Dexter and his long hair (he was a flat-coated retriever). I would have him with me all day and he would help me get through ANY adversity that I would face. I was going to do this with him and for him. When I needed energy or focus, I would look down at my wrist and talk to Dexter ( I am sure the other runners thought I was a bit crazy). I would choke up a bit each time I would do this, but my resolve grew stronger. This WAS going to happen.

I am not stopping for anything!

This would turn out to be the first time in a marathon that I ran the full distance without walking or stopping. At one point around mile 19 I saw several Euro bills on the ground, somewhere between 30 and 50 Euros. Had this been a long run I would have stopped in a second and grabbed them. But for this race, I was not stopping for anything. This was part of the stretch that was supposed to be the only hilly part of the race. To be honest, I don’t remember a single hill on the course, and I never hit that dreaded wall that I have hit in past marathons at mile 19. Instead I felt great, and the course literally felt like I was running downhill all day! I saw my wife at mile 21 and blew her a kiss, knowing that I felt great and this was going to turn out well. Shortly after I came across the 3 hour runner pacers, still way ahead of pace, and ended up passing them all back. I noticed the pack was quite a bit smaller now, and guessed that the hard pace in the beginning hurt more than a few runners.

The big finish!

I saw the big camera boom at mile 24 and I had a huge smile on my face, knowing I had plenty of gas left in my legs and that I was going to hit my goal. It was here that I decided to turn up the pace a bit but my math was a bit off due to the fact that my watch was over a quarter mile off from the race markers. My watch was telling me I had a shot at under 2:56 but the course markers were telling a different story. Either way, I knew I was going sub 3. I pushed the pace over the last bit and finally reached the Brandenburg gate.

From here I knew there was still a ways to go to the finish so I kicked with whatever I had left. Again, I was zig zagging around runners and even had to do a last second dodging of a runner at the finish. I ALWAYS like to push hard at the finish and this felt great.

I crossed the line and the tears began. They were a combination of the tears of joy from reaching my goal and tears of loss thinking of Dexter. They were also the tears that come from being proud of making it this far and thinking about all of those that had supported me. Firstly my wife who has always given me confidence and supported all of the stupid things that I do. Biking with me on my long runs, helping with my enormous amounts of laundry, and supporting me in the difficult week that led us to Berlin. There was also my friends and family that reached out with amazing words of confidence, showing that they believed in me. Then there were all of the people that supported my fundraising, helping me to raise money to support disabled children in their ability to participate in sports. Additionally, all of the supporters and their words of encouragement on social media were amazing. With all this support, there was NO Chance of me failing.

After receiving my medal, I walked back towards the finish line. Hoping to cheer Brian through his own sub 3 finish. In the end, he just missed it with a 3:03, which is still an amazing effort as he was dealing with jetlag and some other difficult life events. We have known each other for almost 20 years and it was really special to share this moment with him.

You can achieve any goal you set your mind to. I finally did it! After 10 marathons, including my Ironmans, I finally ran a sub 3 hour marathon with a 2:57:47. Thank you Berlin, what a great event!

** Note: I get a small commission on Amazon for items sold through clicking on this link