[Sports] Dresden Marathon

Yesterday a friend and I took part in one of Germany's largest city marathon runs - the Dresden Marathon. As our training was not dedicated and long enough to even finish the whole 42,195 km, we decided to take part in the half-marathon competition and did not plan to meet a certain finish deadline - we just wanted to go there and see what we can do without a lot of effort - We often cancel training runs, because we have something else to do... :( For being nearly completely untrained on the 21 km distance, we were very happy to finish in net times of 02:02:38 and 02:04:46. Of course we promise to do better next year, as we plan to do some more training and more competitions next year.
We chose Dresden as our first run, because this is the place where we live and so it was easy for us to take part. (Remember, we are students and cannot spend all our money for journeying around just to give us some pain anywhere... *g*) The route was very impressive and went along nearly every place you will need to visit as a tourist. As it was a city marathon, most of the run was on paved roads and we did not have any hills or mountains in here.

The marathon organization was also great. The day before we even got a noodle meal for free (carbohydrates.. yeah!). Also on Saturday we visited the Marathon Expo and got informed about clothing, food and competitions we can visit next year. During the run on sunday there were quite enough catering posts (water every 2 km, bananas, bread and isotonic drinks every 5 km) - you won't believe the great taste of dry bread and a banana at kilometre 16... :)

The greates experience was of cause the moment, when we reached the finish line and everything was over. Now after having slept nearly enough to compensate the run, it is time to think how to go on next. My plan is now to reach a half-marathon time of below 2 hours (which should be easy) and in the best case a time below 01:50 h (which will be some harder). If I can do this without a problem, I will look forward for the real experience. Maybe I can do a whole marathon in Dresden next year.