Berlin 2015
Ah Berlin. Another city I’d never visited that conjures up
all sort of images just by saying the word, Berlin. Think Robert Ludlum novels.
Or Bond films. Think the ultimate cold war East v West meeting point. The
Stasi. And Berlin was the next stop on Warren and I’s European tour to run half marathons.
I was feeling particularly nervous. I hadn’t trained for two
months. This isn’t the usual ‘oh, should have done more’ story, no. Two months
earlier my body was doing something wrong. A few weeks of mis-diagnosis was
followed by surgery. After that I was not allowed to do any form of exercise
until I was fully healed. So the net result was when we landed I had done no
running, played no football, ridden no bike, swum no lengths and played no tennis
for fully 2 months. My clearance to run from the doc was given the day before
we took off.
Still, how hard can it be to knock out a half?
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| Stasi HQ |
Unusually for us we’d taken the services of a firm called
Running Crazy to organise hotels, entry etc, and they were excellent. We were
met at the airport, handed travel cards for the metro, directions to the hotel
and told to rendezvous for a meal on Saturday night. There were around 20
runners running with Running Crazy, but one sub- group stood out. A year or so
earlier this group of 8 or 9 runners had never run, and had met at a local Park
Run. The old boy leading the group had encouraged the motley crew to push
during the year so they could all do a half, and he’d guide them in Berlin as
he’s been stationed there in the 60’s.
Off we went to the Expo to collect the entry to find it was
held in the old West Berlin airport. Immediately recognisable from umpteen
movies, it still evoked the feel of old Berlin despite it having shut down many
years earlier.
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| Russian War Memorial |
We then headed off to meet an old friend of Warren’s who
just happened to be living in Berlin with his wife. And that’s where the
trouble started as one of his friends
was opening a bar that evening and we were invited to go. Let’s just say the
plan of an early night after a couple of beers was swiftly consigned to the
bin.
Saturday came and we went to explore Berlin on a couple of
rented bikes. This won’t turn into a travelogue so I’ll just say we saw bits of
the old Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the old Stasi headquarters, the Russian built War Memorial and Steel Vintage Bikes, a café that sells, well, steel vintage
bikes. Nothing like a clear name to tell you what the shop does, eh?
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| Is this called Brutalist Architecture? |
The Stasi HQ was eye opening. It also looked like the staff
had moved out a week earlier. A fascinating fact – at the height of the cold
war the Stasi encouraged people to be informers on fellow citizens who were
having, let’s say, western thoughts. On the fall of the Berlin wall, records
reveal that in one town that had a population of just over 32,000 over a
quarter were registered informers.
We also found an interesting road, a wide boulevard that
was symmetrical for about a mile. Whatever building was on the left was
duplicated on the right. I’ve never seen such a road anywhere else. I assumed
they saved on architect fees.
That evening we met up with the Running Crazy crowd for a
bowl of pasta and some mineral water before going to bed early. No, not really
– it was a couple of bottles wine but it was reasonably early night by our standards.
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| Yes, that's a naked man with a horse's head. You are not stoned |
Sunday, and race time. I knew it was going to hurt. So
when the gun went I just said to Warren that he should head off at his pace
while I would settle into a jog. And hope. My basic plan was to jog as far as I
could, then walk, then jog etc. One thing I will say for the Berlin race was
the crowds. At around the 15 or 16k mark my legs were gone, but I couldn’t face
walking with all those people cheering us on. So I’d mutter ‘shut up legs, you
can walk once we get to the next km marker’ and carry on. And then repeat the
admonishment at the next marker. Amazingly I got to the end without walking –
all due to the embarrassment factor of not wanting to walk in front of the
general public.
Time was not important for this jaunt, though for the record
Warren beat me by over 20 minutes. However, I was simply pleased to have got
through the run unscathed.
I seem to recall the rain came then, so Warren & I found a
bar/restaurant not far from the finish to settle down.
And I don’t recall much after that.
