We arrived in Berlin (direct from Chicago), found our hotel and lo-and-behold the expo is <1 mile walk from it! Perfect! An old airport hangar made it the perfect spot for an expo as it was indoor/outdoor. The major disappointment here was that we didn't get an official race shirt as you had to pay extra. I did get an Adidas jacket and Eric got a hat as memorabilia. Swag bag included Barilla pasta and a sponge, which was weird.

The expo was interesting as there were inline vendors for the inline marathon, which takes place on Saturday.

On Saturday, the marathon hosts a Breakfast Run which is a shakeout run that is about 3 miles and finishes in Olympic Stadium on the track and had breakfast treats! LOVED this idea. I think it is a great way to get people running together in a noncompetitive way.

After strolling through the city again, we decided to check out the inline marathon race. Starts in late afternoon and follows pretty much the same path as the marathon course. The difference here is that it is pretty speedy - faster than I ever thought. The winner finished in 59 minutes, which was the first time that an inline marathoner had gone under 1 hour. So basically these people are skating 26 miles per hour...which I can barely do on my bike.

The marathon did not start until about 9am on Sunday AM, which is much different than a 6:30 or 7am start in the States. The bag-check area was easy to find and so was the way to the corrals. The most interesting thing were the 4-way urinals for guys on the way to the start. The corrals were crowded and the volunteers really didn't follow directions as they let everyone go at one time instead of in stages. Whatever.

The marathon circles the city of Berlin pretty much in a clock-wise fashion. I don't remember much of the sights, but I do remember some of the narrow streets being too crowded for all of the people. I saw some Chicago people cheering on the sidelines and also people repping Chicago gear in the race. The other interesting thing to remember is that everything is in km instead of miles...so when passing "marker 13" it was 13k...not 13 miles. This may be obvious to some, but it can start to play games with your head.

The finish area was large and spread out, which is nice. We noticed that the world record was set by the time on the leaderboard. I was happy with my finish 3:42, despite some cramping in the later miles.

Post-race party was great. Got a massage, etc. We were too tired to go to the real Post-Race Party which was at a bar somewhere where they bring in the winners and celebrate super hard.

Awesome race to run!

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