Last days before the Berlin marathon 2008

September 24, 2008

The heat is on! Only 4 more days to go to Berlin – the second marathon of my life. I’m really getting excited about the race. I will toe the line with one of the greatest distance runner of all times: Haile Gebrselassie, who will once again go for the World Record (2:04:26 from Berlin 2007). The weather forecast is almost perfect: overcast and temperatures around 15 degrees. It seems the weather can’t be an excuse and there will be some fast times. For my part I’m also pretty confident that I will improve my PB from my marathon debut (2:25:05, Mainz 2008) by a significant margin. The training at altitude went really good and I could do 95% of the planned training. Since I had such a good training during the summer I am taking a really relaxed taper-period now: The afternoons are training-free during this week and in the morning I am doing only few kilometers. The week before my first marathon I can remember that I did a lot more mileage, but this time and want to save the freshness in my legs for the last 10kilometers of the marathon.
So, Friday goes the flight to Germany (with Finish comrade Miika Takala) and on Saturday we are going to move to the official athletes – maybe we’ll have a chat with Haile? Anyway, it will be another astonishing experience to be in the elite field of a World Marathon Majors competition. The marathon will be broadcasted on German-TV station rbb (they will also provide an online live stream on Sunday) and on Universalsports.