Our first full day in Berlin was one that we both hoped would be relaxed. This year, the marathon organisers were encouraging people to book a time for race number collection to avoid crowds, and we’d booked ours for 10:30. The question that hung over this was: do we go to Templehofer Feld parkrun and do that at an easy pace? It’s usually said to not do anything strenuous before the marathon, but it’s nice to loosen the legs a little the day before.

We decided we’d head out as if we were doing parkrun, and would see how we felt when we got there. At 08:00 we took the U3 from Wittenbergplatz to Hallesches Tor, and the U6 from there to Paradestraße. It’d been a while since I’d last been in the area, five years in fact, but I could still remember the way there, and the caution caused by the pandemic. This time it felt much busier though; it felt normal.

Not long after arriving, Carmen bumped into someone she knew so she talked with them, and ran with them at an easy ~10min/mile pace around the old airfield. It’s hard work to not let your pace creep up on such a flat, single-lap course, but I was sensible. The queue at the finish used a multi lane funnel system due to them having close to one thousand people doing it instead of the usual number of between 100-200 people. It had been a good test of the repairs to our shoes as well.

It’s a fair walk around to the entrance to the expo, to then walk most of the way back through parts of the airport I remembered well. Outside there were plenty of food stands, and the queue into the first hanger for number collection. It made little difference whether we booked a time slot or not in the end as both queues were being processed at the same speed with no checks of what slot you’d booked.

It was quite a fast process and soon had my number in my hands. They also provided the drop bag, and Carmen got the finishers tee she bought. I know the London Marathon does this now too, but it feels so wrong to get a finishers tee before you’ve finished. We also got a goodie bag containing a Compeed plaster, yumyum chicken noodles, protein pasta, a cliff bar, some green tea, and biscotti.

We then queued to get a picture taken in front of the Berlin sign, but forgot to look for our names on the board in the next hall. It seemed maybe the hall wasn’t the best equipped to handle this many people. The men’s toilets were being flooded by water flowing from one of the cubicles, creating a puddle several millimetres deep, and covering the entire room. It would almost have been better to use the portable ones outside.

Since we didn’t want to spend too long on our feet, especially after doing parkrun, we decided to not spend too much time looking around the expo. Instead, we walked for twenty minutes to Cafe FreiRaum, where we both had tea and cake for our lunch. It was a nice quiet area, but isn’t really any cheaper than the more ‘touristy’ parts of Berlin. When budgeting for spending money, it’s worth bearing in mind it can be a little more on average than similar in London.

Another twenty minutes of walking after that, with a brief stop for some shopping in Lidl, we reached an apartment block where David Bowie had once lived. Ten years after his death, there’s now a memorial there depicting Ziggy Stardust.

I thought we’d be able to catch the bus back to the hotel from there, but we missed it by seconds. Instead we took the U-bahn, although we never made it back to the hotel as we decided to go and see the inline skaters.

The area was quite busy, and was a reasonably long walk to see them pass under the Brandenburg Gate, to then have to walk down a side street in order to find the U6 as the closest train station was too busy. We eventually made it back, giving us about three hours to relax off our feet, and to get things ready for tomorrow. The train issues around Wittenbergplatz had resulted in us spending a little more time on our feet walking to stations than we’d planned.

I’d made a reservation at Mola for 18:00 so headed over just before. We went for the classics - spaghetti bolognese for me, and carbonara for Carmen. With a soft drink each, this came to €50 with the tip - an increase of about 20% from what the same had been in London a few weeks before.

The rest of the evening was more relaxing, redoing the repair job to my running shoe, and waiting patiently for race day to arrive.