There’s something about a ballot that makes you want to enter. It’s not just a race, suddenly an entry becomes a prestigious, coveted, prize. If people are clambering for places then it must be a fantastic event, right? Well, no, in fact balloted events are usually over subscribed, over commercial horrors filled with people who have never run in their lives and entered because, see above, it seemed like a fun thing to do. I don’t usually fall for this any more. I know I don’t really enjoy the big London events. I only used to enter them because there was safety in numbers and I knew that amongst 20,000+ entrants there would be other people as slow as me. But now I am an Average Runner I’ve earned the privilege of being able to enter any race I like without looking at the slowest times and the cut offs and I give the big ones and big miss. But the Berlin Half got me hook, line and sinker simply because it was in Germany and I love Germany and surely they would organise it in an efficient German manner that made 40,000 people feel like 400?
A few months after entering the ballot, my favourite band, mesh, announced a German tour and I bought a ticket, flights and hotel for the Berlin gig which just happened to be a week after the Berlin half. I decided that if I got a place in the ballot I would turn it down. Unfortunately, what I hadn’t realised was that if you get a place in the ballot, you don’t get a chance to say no. It efficiently takes your money and you are in whether you like it or not. I suppose I could have just written the entry fee off, but I didn’t. Instead I booked more flights and another hotel. This had turned into a rather expensive fuck up but I told myself that this was ok because usually fuck ups result in people losing a leg or transferring their life savings to a fake Nigerian prince: in the grand scheme of things, having to go to Berlin two weeks in a row was not exactly a catastrophe. And I could get in another Berlin parkrun!
… well, actually, I couldn’t, because the sensible people of Berlin decided they didn’t want 40,000 people descending on their usually petite parkruns, and cancelled them all. I was not going to let this stand in my way and decided to look for the nearest alternative. Having discounted two that I will probably visit deliberately at some point and one that was in fucking Poland, I settled on Allerpark which is in Wolfsburg, a mere 170km from Berlin. I could have just thought “fuck it, I won’t go this week”, I know. I know that would have been easier and less expensive. It’s just not in my nature. Anyway I don’t regret going to Allerpark. It was a lovely one lap run around a lake in a funny industrial town where they make cars and have hooded crows and Rob could not find a pub. I got 27:02 which was my best time of the year.
Eventually I got back to Berlin and picked up my race number from the expo which was at Tempelhof Airport – a vast disused but completely intact airport in central-ish Berlin which just happens to be where a new parkrun is starting this week. I was extremely glad that I hadn’t bought a race shirt (some kind of financial damage limitation) when I saw that they were an utterly hideous shade of pale pink. After all this fucking around I was utterly exhausted and that was before I even had to run the half marathon. Because there was so many people my start time wasn’t until 1050 which I didn’t like as I prefer to be up, done and in the pub for brunch. I set off bright and early from my hotel but there were so many people fighting their way on to the u-bahn that it took me about an hour to get there and then I had to queue for 40 minutes for a portaloo. People were giving up on the queues and weeing in nearby bushes, which were quickly devoid of leaves. I have never seen so many bare bums in all my life. 1050 was looming and I was only halfway to the toilet so I told myself that I didn’t need to go anyway, it was all in my mind, just crack on with it, etc.
By the time I’d walked about five miles to the start I’d completely missed my wave but managed to get towards the start of the next one. By now it was 11am, which is the time you should be FINISHING your race, not starting it, and I was already feeling a bit over the whole thing. Eventually we were off and for the first 2km, it was alright – being at the start of the wave I had a pretty clear path ahead of me as we ran through the scenic Tiergarten and past the Victory Column. But after 2k I started to run into the back of the wave I’d missed and it was SO busy that if I had wanted to keep up my pace (which wasn’t that fast anyway – I had never intended this as a PB attempt) I would have had to dodge and dart and shout “entschuldigung!” over and over. If this wasn’t annoying enough, after 5km my (£70!) sunglasses decided to lose a lens which I couldn’t reinsert so I was now trying to keep the sun out of my eyes without running into anyone. At least I couldn’t complain about missing the scenery, because after we had left the Tiergarten, there was absolutely nothing of interest to see any more. Berlin is a stunning city, full of momuments and huge imposing buildings, old and new, waterways and green spaces and it somehow managed to showcase absolutely none of these. I suspect this is because the course had to go on the only roads in the city wide enough to accommodate the completely preposterous number of participants.
By halfway, seriously regretting my decision to leave the toilet queue before it reached fruitfulness, I finally saw something of interest: a row of portaloos on the other side of the out and back. Once I knew they were there I couldn’t get them out of my mind and the joy of reaching the block and finding the door unlocked, no queue and even some toilet roll inside may just have been the high point of my race. I didn’t even care that I was losing valuable time now – looking at my watch, even without the toilet stop I was about ten minutes slower than I had been the previous week where I’d got a PB of 2:04:50 at the Surrey Half (with a tenth of the number of participants and a 9am start).
Deciding that the race was a bit of a write off but also considering that things could be a lot worse, I decided to enjoy the last 5k. I wasn’t injured and although things had gone really badly, I was still going to finish under 2:20. That was still fifteen minutes faster than that 2016 PB that I thought I could never beat. Three years ago, a disasterous race would have meant a missed cut off, people staring, being chased by a sweep up car, possibly even missing out on an official result and a medal. Now it just meant finishing with a slightly slower set of average runners, completely anonymously and under the radar with no one having any idea if I was pleased with my time or not. Getting faster doesn’t just mean getting PBs, it means earning privileges like this. Finally some impressive buildings sailed into sight. I slowed down even more to admire them. Cruised under the Brandenburg Gate. Took my medal and crammed on to the U-bahn with 40,000 people. Made a note to myself: never enter race with over 10,000 people ever again.
The next week I came back and did Mauerweg parkrun with 46 other participants. I got a PB of 26:16 and I enjoyed it about a million times more.
7:07 