The weekend saw a number of Harriers in Berlin for one of the World marathons. This marathon is where world records are set and broken and the weekend proved to be a close run thing as Bekele missed the WR time by a couple of seconds.
The event was surprisingly unorganised, going against the grain of German efficiency. Finishers T-shirts were available for purchase pre race but the majority of regular sizes were sold out by late Friday that was after a very confusing expo centre where numbers were collected leading up to the event.
Race day was unfortunately no better with drop baggage points scattered around the start area leaving runners scrambling to get ready for the marathon followed by a very poor starting zone entry which allowed many runners to move through the zones without any additional checks. Despite this, the course is very flat and very well supported throughout, but is a little bland for the first 16 miles but does have some points of interest as runners enter the final 10miles although on the day the wet conditions which impacted runners after 2 ½ hours of running would have made the most scenic of cities look dreary!
Some outstanding performances on the day, sub 3 hour hunters Louise and Barry Talman and Jeff Miller all put in superb times, Louise coming home first of the three on the day with a new PB of 2:59:11, Barry 17 seconds over the 3hr mark and Jeff 71 seconds over. Karl Hume, who hadn’t been well (not sure if anyone knew…) finished in 3:24:06 and claimed a new PB with Dave Tomlinson, who has had little training under his belt, finished 15 seconds behind on chip.
Paul Cook, Steven Wilkinson, Michael Robson (PB), Peter Armstrong, Justin Hindmarch and Sarah Tomlinson all had good solid runs on the day and enjoyed the occasion more than racing the event but I reserve special praise for Andrew Glencross who despite having a serious knee injury (just about getting round parkrun 24hrs earlier) finished in 5:25:54. Many amazing performance
