Sun, Mar 17, 2019 - 18K - 02:15:00
18K Including 8K Warm-Up and 10K with Hannah (Karla 5K) in the Lauf der Sympathie from Falkensee to Spandau
For the start of our second year of running a 10K every month, Hannah and I picked out this one-way run from Falkensee to Spandau. Gisi was out of town but Karla decided to join us, running the alternate 5K race from the Berlin-Brandenburg border to Spandau.  
 
Of all the races our family has run together, this one involved the most difficult organizational logistics of picking up numbers and getting to the various starting lines: The only practical way to get to both 5K and 10K starting lines on time was to take a car, and if we had a Greenwheels car that we kept, we would have to park it at Falkensee, finish in Spandau and then we would have to take a train back to Falkensee to go get it again, which we didn't want to do.  
 
We could have alternatively taken a car2go car to Falkensee, parked it, then run to Spandau and gotten another car2go home, but the car2go zone only extended to the 8K marker of the race.  
 
We finally decided on the following plan: take a car2go to Falkensee, get Hannah's and my numbers, leave Hannah there, Karla and I take the car2go to the 5K starting line, I drop Karla off there, then I drive the car2go to the 8K marker, park it, and run back along the race route to the 10K starting line.  
 
The process went pretty much according to plan, but we got a bit behind in our times to the point that when I parked the car2go car, I only had 45 minutes to run the 8K back to the 10K starting line, so I parallel parked like a champion, hopped out and bolted down Falkensee Chaussee towards the 5K start where I saw Karla, gave her the stopwatch she wanted, spent a couple minutes with her, then took off again towards the 10K starting line, now with only 27 minutes to cover the 5K distance to the starting line. There was also a bit of a head wind, but I finally arrived in Falkensee, and as I turned the last corner, I heard the announcer say "two minutes to the start" and could see the line of top runners full of anticipation getting ready to sprint.  
 
Before they took off, I ducked under a rope and ran along side the hundreds of packed running, while trying to find Hannah in the crowd. The gun went off and about 20 seconds after that, I received a message from Hannah that she had crossed the starting line and was on her way to Spandau, so I jumped in the moving crowd of runners, crossed the starting line, and ran off after her. At around 2K I spotted her familiar left-to-right-swaying hair far up in front of me and finally caught up with her around 3K.  
 
The race was quite uneventful, flat and straight, but fun to be part of a mass of people all running in one direction with one goal. There's something about it. We reentered Berlin at 5K, and at 7K received the joyful message from Karla ("done bitches") and knew it wouldn't be long now and we would be next.  
 
At 9K, we entered the Spandau Altstadt streets and finally turned the last corner to run the final stretch on cobble stones to the Spandau Rathaus. Hannah broke out into her classic final sprint, but since my legs being at 18K at that point, I was able to speed up a bit but just couldn't stay with her. Hannah finished with a 01:07:10 and Karla with a 38:01, both improved times for them compared to previous races.  
 
Hannah and I found Karla quite quickly, and according to logistics plan, we hopped in another car2go and took off immediately for home enjoying our victory pack of after-race chocolate and other goodies, and each with a well-earned medal.