Day 85 -Bonn Marathon

I feel simultaneous joy and regret that I ever decided to sign up for the marathon today, even as a part of the relay. I woke up today and took the tram into town. luckily, my tram actually goes underground while in the immediate city area of Bonn, so it was still running even with the marathon happening overhead. I arrived at Old AIB at about 11, so I unfortunately missed the first person of our relay leaving the starting point. It was OK though because I found the person running the fourth leg and hung out with them while we ate something in preparation for the run and waited for our turn to get to the hand-off point.

 Nicole (after running) and Melissa (before running)

Excited/nervous before the marathon

When it came time to go to the meeting point, I walked with 5 others across the Hofgarten to where we would be receiving our chips. These chips were a part of a Velcro anklet that would record the time you left the meeting point and the time you entered the next meeting point where the chip would be handed over. We waited for what seemed like forever for the second runner to make their way to the hand-off point. I later found out that the first runners weren't able to run until the last wave released, so that meant that we were in the back of the group and had to wait for almost everyone else to run by. Finally, I saw Matt and he gave me the chip. I put in the borrowed ear-buds from Nicole (who had already finished the half-marathon earlier) and I was off. My stretch was 6.15 miles, or about 9.9 km. We went across the bridge, through Buel into the residential area, looped around, and came all the way back. It was better with music, but I still had to stop and walk quite a bit. In fact, I once stopped for so long that a woman came up behind me and said that I should keep running, it wasn't really that far. In fact, we were over half-way there! Of course, she said this to me in German, so I couldn't exactly respond, but it was sweet of her, and I got my spirits back up for a little while.

Just as I was about to flag again, the best pump-up song ever came on, Survivor. It got me through all the way to the next water station. By the way, these stations were hilarious. They went in this order: water, energy drink, tea, coca-cola, bananas. I thought it was pretty funny the way that they had it set up. As we went back over the bridge, I stopped again, and once again a lady looked at me and tried to encourage me. We ran together for the rest of the bridge, almost to the meeting point, but I had to stop because of a stitch in my side. I felt really bad because she would talk in German to me and I really couldn't answer back with the right words, and I didn't want her to make the effort to come up with English words just so I wouldn't have to try and understand what were obviously encouraging  statements. Finally, I got to the last 100 meters and I saw some of my team-mates cheering for meet at the turning point. It pushed me to go the last few meters to get to Melissa, the one running the last and longest leg. I got my medal and went back to the turnoff point to cheer on my comrades as they came in as I was the first one to finish.

When I met up with them, the first thing I asked was "on a scale of pasty to tomato, how red is my face" Surprisingly, not bad. They placed it at embarrassment. We cheered everyone on, and when the last of our teams came around the corner, we hopped the fence and ran the last few meters with her to encourage her. She was almost the last one, with only a few people behind her, but she finished strong with a quick pace. We sat around and talked for a bit before going to the T-mobile store where the last part of the race would be. We waited for our team members to come around and when they did, we ran the last few meters with them, finishing together. After that, we went back to Old AIB so we could get our stuff as well as free food. When everything was finished, we walked to New AIB because we wanted a place to sit that wasn't to far from the city center. We didn't go home because we still needed to go to church and didn't have time to take a shower or change at home.

All of us after the relay

The break at AIB was great, especially with the super comfy couches that are there. We went to church and I headed straight home afterwords. My family was still up, and we even had a visitor, so I hung out with them for a while before I could call my parents. As I walked up the stairs, I could feel my legs screaming at me for what I had them do today. I can just tell that getting up tomorrow will be a ton of fun. Tomorrow is just a normal day, nothing extraordinary happening like the past few days, but it'll be nice to return to normalcy.

Till next time!
Erin Z