Tag Archives: Berlin marathon

October 17, 2012 · 8:00 am

Berlin marathon breakfast run

One of the events that include some big marathons is a morning run the previous day, the so-called “breakfast run”.

When we ran the marathon in Paris, only our friend Serna attended that run. This time we went together and Luca and my brother Jaime waited for us at the end.

The run, a very easy run of almost 6 km, departed in front of the beautiful Palace of Charlottenburg and ended at the Olympia Stadion.

This stadium today hosts Hertha Berlin football matches, but it is better known as the stadium where the summer olympic games of 1936 were celebrated: the first ones televised, inaugurated by Adolf Hitler and the ones in which the athlete Jesse Owens won 4 gold medals.

See below some of the pictures we took during that morning run:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Hopefully the next time we’ll remember to bring either flags or a festive costume as many of the other runners typically do.

See the route we followed from the palace in Charlottenburg to the stadium as recorded by my Germin GPS:

Breakfast run route.

Finally, I found two interesting documents in relation to the stadium and the games:

  • The stadium plan [PDF, 1.7 MB] from today’s stadium website. In it you can see the location of the Maifeld (used for Hitler’s government celebrations and during the olympics for the equestrian events), the Bell Tower, the stadium and the Olympischer Platz.
  • The official report [PDF, 42.4 MB, 640 pages] of the games. It contains all kind of info about the International Olympic Committee at the time, hundreds of pictures of the Games and all of results of the different events.

1 Comment

Filed under Sports, Travelling

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

October 15, 2012 · 8:00 am

Berlin marathon

Last September 30th I completed the Berlin marathon together with my friend Serna and brother Jaime. This was the second marathon we ran together (the previous one being Paris 2012). The sixth one I ran.

Jose, Jaime and I in the runners’ fair.

The morning of the marathon I published a post in which I explained how I arrived at it in terms of training: I suffered an injury about 1.5 months prior to the race which didn’t allow me to practically train during the last month. Previously I had been training well and accumulating many kilometres.

My bib number for the race:

My Berlin Marathon bib number: 14028.

You may see the route of the marathon and my performance as recorded by my Garmin GPS here:

My Berlin Marathon Garmin records.

I started with a bracelet with references for a 3h40′ marathon, 5 minutes lower than in Paris. My plan was to start at that pace (5’13” per km) and keep it until I could. I was expecting that I would not be able to run the whole of it and that I would have to walk in case the Achilles tendon was hurting again. If that happened the later it occurred the better. Thus the faster I could go at the beginning the better for having to walk less distance at the end.

I did the half marathon in slightly above 1h47′, better than in Paris and was still feeling OK. Though at km 23 I started feeling hard to make kilometres under 5’20” (lack of speed endurance work and series in the last month)… I started to think of managing the margin I had built.

Finishing the marathon (km. 42).

However, 5 kilometres later I started to feel the ankle getting harder and some cramps in the quadriceps of the right leg (lack of kilometres and long runs in the last month). I then decided to slow down, otherwise I would have to start walking soon (when you get these cramps, the following step is feeling the muscle like a rock and not being able to run… experience from marathons 1 and 3).

From then on I clocked 6′ per km, then 6’20”, 6’35”, 6’40″… but I was still quite happy as at every kilometre I was making the numbers in my head: “if I keep this pace, I can finish in 3h53′ “, then “3h55′ “… I finally clocked: 3h57’48”, but at all times I knew I could complete it and that I was going to be under 4 hours, thus I just kept on running and smiling.

See the analysis of Garmin records by kilometre below. You can see how the pace was at each stage as I explained it above.

My Berlin Marathon running pace per km (mm:ss).

Two more pictures to complete this post: my finisher diploma and the detailed street map of the route.

Berlin Marathon detailed street map.

Next stop: Maratona di Roma, 17th March 2013.

5 Comments

Filed under Sports, Travelling

Tagged as , , , , , ,

September 30, 2012 · 9:00 am

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.

2 Comments

Filed under Sports

Tagged as , , , ,

August 2, 2012 · 8:00 am

New high: 297km in July

About a month ago I was struggling to get back into the habit of frequently running. What is more, I had to be starting with the specific training plan for the Berlin marathon (30 September, which I will run together with my friend Serna and my brother Jaime).

At the beginning of July I checked the stats from Garmin connect from the previous year. In July 2011 I had run 283km. I wrote the following tweet to commit myself:

In the end, in July I ran 25 days and rested 6. I ran in Toulouse, Sevilla, El Rompido (Huelva, Spain), Madrid and Papendal (The Netherlands). I ran one race in Toulouse, I ran in the beach, did 3 days of treadmill, 4 days of series and one half marathon training. I ran in two different athletics tracks: in Toulouse and Papendal.

And in the end… I completed over 297km, 14km more than in July 2011, fulfilling the objective, setting a new personal record (previous one being 287km from September 2011 – ultramarathon of 100km included) and heading right into the marathon training mode.

Injures permitting: Berlin, see you in less than 2 months.

3 Comments

Filed under Sports

Tagged as , , ,