Berlin marathon spectating sub 2:20 runner on foot
Hello everyone! This year I was lucky enough to fly to Germany with my runner to watch him race the Berlin marathon. I figured I’d post where my group watched him run by because it was super smooth and maybe it will be helpful to future spectators of fast racers. He ran sub 2:20 for reference.
We saw him 5 times by foot, opting not to take public transit so that we could see more of the city and also not worry about missing him with potential train delays.
1: We started on the north side of the Victory Column before 1km.
2: speed walked up to 6km.
3: speed walked back to 1km and went under the street via the tunnel that’s just east of the Victory Column and continued down to the corner of the course that is just after 21km.
4: walked at a leisurely pace (with time to stop for coffee) along the route between 37km & 39km, crossed to the outside of the course at some point, and posted up on the north side of the street after 39km.
5: RAN to the final stretch on Unter den Linden around 41.5km (we really had to book it) and got there just in the nick of time. This was the only one we felt like we might miss him, but we didn’t have to weave through too many pedestrians, so it wasn’t too bad.
Overall I have no regrets about how we spectated this race. It was a blast and we ended up walking & running our own half marathon between 8am and noon that day. NB: in order to catch him all 5 times, the only leisurely walk was between 21km & 39km, so wear your own running shoes if you follow what we did.
By the way, we did use public transit the whole trip besides during the race and had no issues, so I’m sure we could have figured out a way of incorporating that into our spectating plan. I’m glad we walked, but I am curious if anyone has watched a fast runner with any luck taking U-Bahns just in case we end up coming back to the Berlin marathon.
I included a map of roughly where we stopped along the route. The streets we walked/ran along aren’t precisely marked, but this is the map we used when navigating and I figured this was good enough to help people visualize where we went.
Happy spectating!