I do plan to recap our days in the Rhine and Mosel River valleys but wanted to do these marathon centric posts in close to real time.

We arrived by train from Cologne just after 3pm on Thursday into Berlin and checked into our hotel, The Melia Berlin. We have a marathon package with Travelling Fit which is how I ended up running the marathon when G ended up with a lottery entry after he had already signed up with the tour company. Now we are both running. The hotel is in an excellent position, only about 1km to the start/finish line and right near the U-Bahn line that goes to the expo.

We got settled in, met the hosts of the tour. We let them know that we would not be joining their shake-out run the following morning (too early) or the city bus tour (avoiding travel sickness and a possible migraine trigger) and would make our own way to pickup our bibs.

For dinner I had booked Pho Mitte which was a short walk from the hotel. We shared some summer rolls, then I had beef Pho and G had a duck curry. We enjoyed this although I ate a big bit of chilli and couldn’t taste a thing afterwards for about 15 minutes. I had eaten the chilli pieces on the top of the summer rolls and they had hardly registered as hot so either this was a different variety of chilli or the piece in my Pho that I ate was just that much larger (maybe it also had the seeds still in?). The food was good though and I was able to enjoy the rest of mine once my mouth settled down.

Back to the hotel we read, scrolled then went to bed. I slept pretty well. Breakfasts are included while we are here. They kept refilling the pancakes and maple syrup jug. I guess everyone is carb loading.

At about 9:30 we headed off to the expo at Templehof Airport. We visited for a tour when we were in Berlin with E but this time the arrival halls were full of people and the gate area was where we lined up to get our ID and start cards checked before they put on the wrist band that we need to enter the corrals on race day. There was a big crowd but it moved pretty quickly and once inside for bib pickup and the expo it was not busy.

Pickup went without a hitch, we got ourselves some merchandise. I chose a T-shirt (not the finisher one, I don’t want to be presumptive) and a jacket. Then got a photo of ourselves. A friend who lives in Berlin now met us (he’s running and needed to exchange his T-shirt) and we wandered the expo before heading off to find some not-awful coffee. It was good to catch up (I hadn’t seen him since uni days but G kept in contact).

Then it was back to the hotel where we picked up our dirty washing and walked to the laundromat. We put our washing on then went a couple of doors down for lunch. We ordered a fried rice each which turned out to be massive plates but I somehow made it all the way to the end of mine. With our clean washing we headed back to watch TV for the rest of the afternoon. We had the last episode of The Gentlemen which ended up in its usual nuts way.

Dinner was pasta, just down the road at Roma’s. This is a basic pasta restaurant that was doing a roaring trade with the runners. I was glad I’d made the booking. We had eaten our pasta and were out of there within 40 minutes so it was back to the hotel for some more TV. We watched the first few episodes of the new season of Slow Horses before lights out.

Overnight I had the weirdest dream. I was running in the marathon but the course ended up at going through our university. The course was marked out with purple chalk. I was running and feeling fine but for some reason very slow (slower than normal that is) and very relaxed about it. I was refuelling by eating fried rice from a container with my hands as I ran along. Then I grabbed a lump of plain white rice and when I put it in my mouth I said to G who at that minute appeared on the sidelines encouraging me on that I hoped this didn’t make me sick. (you know how you need to be super careful with cooked rice). The race went on and I took a wrong turn and had to double back but finally got on the right course again. Finally I was coming to the finishing line and it was like volunteers with a trestle table and they were packing everything up but there was a crepe paper streamer across where the finishing line was and a person got a medal out of the box as I was coming towards them which they hung around my neck. I asked them where’s the timing thing you need to run over and she said don’t worry they’ve stopped the clock and pointed to the person at the side holding a stop watch. Then I woke up.

It took a while to fall back to sleep after I woke up. I guess the good news is that none of that has any chance of actually happening. Now you also have some insight into the weird goings on in my subconscious.

This morning was I went for a little run along the river to the Brandenburg Gate and back. It was the most beautiful morning and everything felt good.

The rest of the day involved pancakes for breakfast. Relaxing after breakfast before heading out for another cab loading lunch—this time miso soup and a bowl of rice.

Back at the hotel I had a short nap, then got my kit ready and double-checked all the start times and other logistics.

A very short recovery day runners yoga with Adrienne, some more TV watching and it was time for dinner with the rest of the travelling Fit contingent—all 240 of them.

Now to bed.

Do you have strange dreams when you have something big coming up? What’s your favourite carb-loading food?