running the marathon

Yesterday I was running to the sound of cheering and the (mostly good) music blaring from one or other of the 42 bands scattered around the course. It was the 6th Freiburg marathon (although only my first) and it was a lot of fun. Well, mostly… the last 7-8 km gave a slightly different meaning to the word fun and today, despite beautiful weather, I wasn’t quite up to a morning run. In fact, bed to couch is enough for now! But, about the music… well, Freiburg boasts 42 bands arranged around the course (which is 21km, so an average of two each km). They covered the whole gamut from traditional German Ooompah music, local Allemanisch bands, heavy metal, rap and hip-hop. Even a reggae band somewhere around the course. Super6 stood on top of their van and rapped over some blaring music. Some didn’t even boast any musicians at all, as with the fully automated Orgelbau from Waldkirch: Notruf 113 atop a baechle pumping out riffs: Last Minute got one of the prime spots, in front of the Stadt Theatre, although whenever I ran past they seemed to be either tuning up or warming up: So how was my run? Terrible to be honest. The first 20km were easy, too easy in fact, and I didn’t pay attention to pace, running ahead of myself. The next 10km, apart from being uphill, got progressively harder until for the last 7-8 km my legs starting cramping up and I was reduced to a sort of shuffling walk/run in order to finish. Not so much an epic journey, more of a tragedy then. But at least the soundtrack was good.