Good morning, Berlin!

This morning, as this post is being published I’ll be starting the 39th Berlin marathon, together with my friend Serna and brother Jaime.

At mid-point through the training, beginning of August, I wrote a post about the good amount of kilometres I had been able to train in July. Two weeks later I got injured in the Achilles tendon when training in the hills of Torrelodones. I took a one-week rest and slowly re-started training. That week finished with a 10k race in Colomiers where I achieved a new PR in the distance but got pain in the same tendon again.

I took a 10-day rest and tried to run again: 3.5km, 7km and then 12km… but got the pain back and had to cancel my participation in Toulouse half marathon.

As you can see in the graphic below, the training season can be divided in 3 weeks of getting into the habit, 7 weeks of good training and 6 weeks of struggling to recover, plus few days of running and swimming.

Berlin training season. Kilometres run per week and average heart rate (bpm).

During the season I should have run over 1,000km, but in the end I have only completed 643km. This is more than I could run in preparation for the last marathon in Paris, but this time I arrive to the starting line without having run recently and the bunch of the training was done more than a month ago…

As Jaime says, this time the race will not be about the time, but just about trying to complete it… a day for the epic.

Lastly, I wanted to raise awareness about one thing I love of some races: the support of charities and NGOs. We subscribed to this marathon last year and, when doing so, each of us contributed with 42€ (1 € per km run) to the charities supported by the organization.