Munich Marathon

After completing the Lochness Marathon in Inverness Scotland the week before (Oct 3rd, see write below). The Macleaniacs (Rick and Tracy)and the Lascelles (Keith and Joan) travelled on to Munich, Germany to take part in the Munich Marathon (Joan would take part in the 10k, her first running). The trip would take different paths, but once we met up in Newcastle, we took a ferry to Amsterdam from North Shields. Then flew to Munich.
Munich is a beautiful city and the marathon would hilight its beauty. The expo was larger than we expected and we picked up the required "bargains". Munich wasn't cheap though, the race as well, on top of your registration you have to purchase or actually rent your chip for 6 Euros and if you want a race shirt you have to prepurchase that too. But since we probably wouldn't be able to do this again...
T-shirts and "bargains" in hand we headed back to the hotel room and another day of site seeing before race day.

There are 9,000 runners in the marathon so this is a big event, but staging the start and finish in the Olympic park is great location with lots of room. The finish for all events is in the Olympic stadium (1972 Olympics) on the track, and a amazing stadium it is. Not dated at all.

Race morning we took the Metro to what was supposed to be the closest stop to the Olympic part (not sure about that, as we walked along way to get there).
But get there we did and walked to the stadium to the bag drop areas, which were very well organized (well they are germans!). Off to the start area we went, and by this time it was getting very crowded. Rick and myself had decided that we might as well start in the second coral as we weren't in any hurry and we knew this may be a struggle after last weeks race. Remember beer is plentiful in Munich! We said our goodbyes to Joan whose race would start about 40 minutes after ours at the same spot.

At 10 minutes after 10 on the 10th of the 10th month in 2010 the second coral started, and we were off. It was a slow start as it was crowded and again we weren't in a hurry. Tracy was in front of us for a while. At about 4k in we went by a beer station (a little early for us, but we took note of the location because we knew we'd be coming back this way). Shortly after we turned onto the Ludwig Strasse,
a wide boulevardthat we would a couple of times. Majestic buildings and architecture to put north american races to shame. At about 8k in we entered the English Garten, a very large park, which we ran through for about 5k or more before exiting into a very nice residential area. The amzing scenery contiued on through out the race. My injuries started to wear on me and by 19k or so I knew this was going to be a tough go, but Rick said he wasn't at his best either and was willing to just plod along or walk or what ever was required. And so it went on like this for many k's. Back onto the Ludwig Strasse at about 30k and off again to follow some narrower roads to more sites.
Back to the Ludwig Strasse at 36k, counting down the k's to the finish and then there was the beer stand again. I said to Rick to pcik up 2 cups each as we deserved them. There was lots there! And they were big cups, but once we tried it we tossed them just as quick, yukkkk! That was the worst beer we'd ever tried. That last couple of k were extremely difficult, but only because of our condition. I was looking forward to finishing on the track where I watched my running hero's compete in the 72 Olympics (Viren, Foster...). We took a last walk break just before entering the stadium, through a tunnel we ran with strobe lights, dry ice fog and music blaring into the stadium (what a rush). We ran the fastest we had ran all day around that soft track, it felt good finally.
Rick and I finished in about 4:23 and looked for the beer tent, found it and would you believe its alcohol free beer, WTF! Oh well we drank it anyway, Rick waited for Tracy while went ot look for Joan. Joan had completed her 10k in a 1:00 PB, woohoo! and thought that she could hav edone much better, but ran cautiously for the first half. Tracy would finish in 5:44 in another great effort.

An awesome experience, in a big city marathon in part of the world I'd love to come back to. Definitly recomended.