A half-marathon

Today the 10th Cologne marathon took place. They always have a marathon for inline skaters and for Handbiker (or handcyclists as they are called in English). For the first time there was also a half-marathon race for which I had registered. I woke up this morning feeling bad: sore throat, running nose, muscles aching. I considered not running, especially since I had only trained twice since the last race almost one month ago. But it's Cologne! I would run here even if I was on a drip.

The start was early at 9 a.m. to give a handful of madmen and madwomen a realistic chance to run the half-marathon first, then the inline skater marathon and then the full marathon. Yes, there are people who do that. They are called ultra runners, I call them lunatics. (The fastest of them ran the 105k in 5:58:48.)

I left my kit bag in the hall...

and put on a plastic bin liner (a nice one, with the "Maus", a children's tv character, printed on it) to keep warm until the race starts. In the morning it was 9 degrees cold, but the sun was already shining bright promising a fine day. And then finally I started running... and I felt fine. OK, the throat was bad and I spare you the jucky details of what I had to do during the race to get rid of the slimey feeling. But I really enjoyed the race and I was grinning widely all the time. Talking about time... that was surprisingly good: 2:12:13, which puts me into 1039th place overall and in 226th place in my age group (both women only).

The catering area for the runners was the best I have ever seen in my life! There was water, juice, beer, cola, tea, bananas, sausages, power bars, soup... and almost no queueing. Apart, of course, from the beer tent. There was a queue and when it was my turn, they gave me two instead of just one. I gave one away to a guy who looked thirsty and he almost kissed my feet.

After I had eaten more than is good for me, I retrieved my kit bag...

... and rested for a couple of minutes...

Then I went to watch the start of the marathon. It got slighlty more tv coverage then the half-marathon:

The building you see here is the old trade fair centre. The whole of the inside has been torn down, only the facade remains, because it is listed. They are rebuilding the inside structure and when it's all done, the television company RTL will move in.

The half-marathon finishers are easily recongisable by the plastic cover they are wearing:

This is one of the bin liners with the "Maus" on them, by the way:

When I reached the start area for the second time today, it was 12:10 and the top athletes marathon had already been started.

By now it was warmer, almost 16 degress, and the sky was a beautiful blue:

The marathon race is started in several groups. First it's of course the top athletes. Then the main field is separated into several groups according to estimated finish time. To the left of me, there was the first line of the first main field.

To the right of me was the last line of the school children's relay marathon group.

The start takes forever. From where I was standing, the runners still had to walk for about 4 minutes to the actual starting point of the race. And then it's 42.195k to the finish line.

There was a bride and groom running too:

Ford is the main sponsor of the marathon. They had also sponsored a huge ball to entertain the runners while they were still waiting:

It was big!

I walked to the train station past banana peel pyramids...

and discarded "Maus" bin liners: