Race Date: Sunday 29th September 2024
In September of 2023 I didn’t really have a great deal planned for the rest of the year, nor for 2024. We were in the process of moving house ( this eventually went through in mid November) so I didn’t want to take on too much knowing that the new place would require a full refurbishment. I had hoped to gain a good for age place in the London Marathon having run a suitable time at Manchester in the spring and having a 5 minute buffer I was expecting to be accepted. For some reason though the window to apply for the GFA places had been put back a couple of times from July and then August and was now expected to be in October, so after watching the Berlin Marathon on the tv at the end of September my interest was aroused somewhat when the commentator explained next year’s event would be the 50th anniversary. I thought I might as well enter the ballot as I had nothing to lose and London wasn’t guaranteed anyway. Fast forward to the first week of December and I received an email telling me they’d see me in Berlin next September. This came just a week after I’d had confirmation that my good for age application had been accepted for London. Not exactly how I would have planned it but exciting all the same. December wasn’t the ideal time to be shelling out on a trip abroad just for a race and my entry had cost €200 so when we got round to booking flights for myself and wife Stella the options were limited and predictably quite expensive so we opted for an early flight out on the Saturday and an early return on the Monday. Not ideal but I was just happy to have a place and to have something booked.
So having not wanted to take too much on I now had London Marathon booked for April and Berlin Marathon to follow in September.
London had gone ok, I had managed to shave a further 37 seconds off my PB from Manchester but I had hoped to be quicker and never really got going, partly due to the congestion of other runners and partly down to my just not being as fit as I’d hoped. With that in mind I thought if I could get myself into better shape come September I would roll the dice a little and aim for something closer to 2:55. I don’t particularly enjoy running in warm temperatures so I wasn’t really looking forward to the summer training and there didn’t seem to be much of a break after London before I’d need to start upping the miles again so the plan was to do a shorter build of 12 weeks including the taper.
After a short rest post London I had been targeting some 5k’s and at Donfaster 5k in July had managed to sneak under 18 mins for the first time in nearly eight years so if I could keep the short end speed and introduce the longer stuff later in the summer I would hopefully be in decent shape having done a decent marathon block earlier in the year.
As we all know the summer of 2024 was pretty rubbish in terms of decent weather so other than a 10 day holiday in Greece I didn’t have too much hot weather to contend with. Training was to follow my previous marathon blocks of trying to get to the Tuesday group and/or track on Thursday and a long run on the weekend which on 3 or 4 occasions would contain some sort of marathon specific workout. I sort of make these up as I go along and maybe there should be a bit more structure to it but it seems to work for me.
Training went reasonably well, long runs were getting ticked off, though the TPT from Rother Valley was getting tiresome but midweek sessions were going well too. One midweek session on the track called for 5x1000m for the group or 8x1000m for anyone marathon training which on this occasion was just me but thankfully the group are always keen to help each other out so I was grateful to Rob Byers for pacing the final three reps with me along with a few others lads who helped on a couple too.
I was struggling to find a suitable local half marathon to race to give me an idea of fitness but I was encouraged by a classic 3x3200m session on the track where each rep was about 18-20 seconds quicker then I was doing them in the spring build up to London. This was another example of the advantage of training with a group as I was well paced by Luke Mair (training for Amsterdam Marathon) so was able to sit in behind him and also had Chris Wade and Tim Erskine keeping me company which made the long reps more manageable. My final long run session was at the Humber Coastal Half Marathon at Cleethorpes. The course was flat but wasn’t the best, crossing fields and parts on sand but I managed to do the last 8 miles at marathon pace so it was a worthwhile trip.
Sound strategy from John to get the Expo out of the way asap.
Berlin
An early flight Saturday morning from Birmingham got us to Berlin around 10:30am. We decided to go straight to the Expo to get the hassle out of the way. Social media hadn’t been too complimentary about the organisation but once there I had my race number, drop bag (5 euros extra pre paid) and other bits within 20 mins so couldn’t complain. Stella waited in front of the old aeroplanes in the sunshine with a beer! The expo is at the old disused Templehof Airport. Film buffs may recognise it from a scene in a Bridge of Spies. Being as we were only in Berlin for two days we didn’t go round the Expo stalls and quickly got away to grab some lunch before heading to the hotel. Having not slept particularly well the night before in Birmingham it was good to get to the hotel and get my head down for an hour and rest the legs. I’ve never really bought into the whole maranoia thing but since having a sports massage on Wednesday morning my legs had been doing all sorts of complaining on both sides and now I seemed to have developed some sort of knot at the top of my left calf. A day of travelling and a fair bit of walking was probably the culprit. Not much could be done about it now but I was cursing myself for losing my massage ball somewhere between the Birmingham hotel and Berlin. We went for a short walk around Old Spandau town and returned to the hotel with a large pizza and once everything was prepared for the morning it was an early night.
The hotel breakfast was from 6:30 and predictably was full of other runners. It wasn’t the best but I managed to get some cereal with some fruit down me, a couple of croissants and a coffee. I’d have a banana once in the race village about an hour before the start.
A 15 minute train ride got us into Berlin Hauptbahnhof station which left a short walk to the race village across from the Reichstag Parliament building. The race village is in Tiergarten Park which was a little chaotic with an untold amount of people using the bushes to go to the toilet. The bag drop was really quick though so I got myself ready and headed towards the start about 20 minutes before we were due off. I was fortunate enough to be in wave B which was set to start at 9:15 so just the elites and wave A in front of us. As it happened it took about 2 minutes from the elites starting before I crossed the start line.
Conditions really couldn’t have been any better. Clear skies, nice and cool about 8-10° and literally no wind.
The plan was to try and get through halfway in 1:28:00 and then try and push on later in the race at around 30k. I normally work in miles but being outside the UK in Europe everything was in km. A 1:28 half translates to 4:10 per km but not wanting to get too obsessed with the watch and hoping to make sure it felt right I had planned to manual lap my watch every 5k where the timing mats were to be and hope to be around or just under 21 mins.
For those interested, and the editor tells me that they will be, I would be taking on four energy gels at km’s 8, 16, 24 and just after 30k. Gels 2 and 4 would be caffeine gels. Previous brand Torq had been swapped for Precision fuel after my last Torq gel at London took about 10 mins to get down and was eventually ditched. I would use most of the water stations of which there were plenty.
Early on the race is run on both sides of the road, probably for the opening 10 minutes and in this opening period I saw fellow Steel City Michael Cockings just ahead and on the other side of the main pavement. I briefly thought about catching him up to say hello but then reminded myself that a quick look at his Power of 10 a few days previously had suggested that he would be 2 or 3 mins quicker than me (which he was) and I didn’t want to get dragged along with him so thankfully thought better of it. The early part of the race went fairly straight forward and for a change in the marathon I was feeling pretty good. The only problem I had really was that the 3 hour pacers had got quite a crowd behind them who in turn were creating quite a bit of congestion that was covering the whole road. I think they had started in Wave A so I’d started a little behind them. I did get past them but when I went to the next ‘Wasser’ station they carried on through and I found myself back behind them in the crowd. It was like this for a while but I eventually got fully clear of them at around 15k. The running became much easier once I was past them as the roads, corners and water stations were much clearer. I was having a little hip pain on the left hand side which had appeared out of nowhere during my warm up at the half marathon two weeks earlier but it wasn’t causing too much trouble as of yet. I went through halfway in 1:28:35 so was a little behind what I’d intended but I was still moving and feeling pretty good so wasn’t too concerned. I was essentially counting up now to 30k when I still intended to gradually increase the pace. My pace had remained fairly consistent up to this point and I’d sped up a little from 25-30k, so while I’d probably left myself too much to do for 2:55, I was still thinking 2:56 was achievable. 30k came and I nudged the pace up again but very shortly after this point both my quads really started to hurt and we’d still got about 10k to go so it was now a case of trying to maintain a good pace without getting into a state where I cramped up. This was frustrating as I still felt really good aerobically but there are so many different factors to contend with in the marathon which makes it such a challenge to get it right on the day.
By about 38k it was really becoming a grind but we got through 40k which mentally felt good and then Stella popped up just before 41k so that was a big boost and I was nearly home. Just the long straight down to Brandenburg Gate now and then another 350m or so once you are through to the finish. I knew 2:56 was going to be close and I pushed as hard as I could but couldn’t quite get under. 2:56:02! I’d done the 2nd half in 1:27:28 but it wasn’t quite enough but it was still enough for a 3 minute and bits PB, so overall I was very happy especially considering how the calf felt on Sunday morning!
(Editors Note: When even the best prepared may start to struggle from 30k onwards, John’s splits below show how his strategy of a conservative first half worked well but always on schedule for a pb although planning for a negative split was possibly ambitious. The effect of a Stella at 40k is quite apparent.)
| kmh | 5k | 10k | 15k | 20k | 25k | 30k | 35k | 40k | Finish |
| London | 14.20 | 14.09 | 13.96 | 14.10 | 14.24 | 14.11 | 14.10 | 14.22 | 14.21 |
| Berlin | 14.32 | 14.33 | 14.19 | 14.29 | 14.30 | 14.45 | 14.60 | 14.42 | 14.67 |
I’m not really one for hanging around afterwards so after getting my medal and collecting my bag fairly quickly I just had to get my medal engraved which was an option I’d pre paid for to give me a little added motivation. This literally took about 2 mins from handing my medal in to collecting on the other side of the tent.
Noch Ein Bier
Being as we were staying only 15-20 minutes outside the centre of Berlin we’d decided to go back to the hotel so I could get showered and changed and then headed back into Berlin for some Guinness and Currywurst! I would definitely recommend doing Berlin if you get the chance although that’s easier said than done and I was lucky to get in but there’s no harm in entering the ballot.
Thanks as always to the group for advice and for helping with the midweek sessions which on occasion this summer had been set up specifically for the marathon runners even though we were in the minority. Thanks also to the people I have trained with, in particular when helping with the long reps when they didn’t need to. Coach is furious as I went all the way to Berlin and drank Guinness but he always has to find fault with something.
That’s three road marathons now in the space of 18 months for me so I’m definitely ready for a break from them and will hopefully keep chipping away at my times for the shorter distances for now and possibly have another go in spring of 2026. I need to see if I can convince the group to have an away trip to Rotterdam maybe!
| Pos | Name | Posn | Time |
| 2907 | Michael Cockings | M45 | 02:53:37 |
| 3346 | John Kilcoyne | M45 | 02:56:02 |
| 19182 | Kate Scott | F60 | 03:45:40 |
Kate is now banging on the door of Mary Picksley’s F60 record. Men’s winner was Milkesa Mengesha (Ethiopia) 02:03:17, Female winner Tigist Ketema (Ethiopia) 02:16:42 and of note is Hallamshire lass Calli Hauger-Thackery 02:21:24 who is now second on the UK rankings behind Paula Radcliffe. There were 54082 finishers the last of whom just about managed to break the nine hour barrier.
Full Results: Results Berlin Marathon 2024
What are your plans? Be careful there are spies everywhere.