Marathon finisher once again

As I write these lines, I’m at the lounge of Frankfurt airport, looking around for other members of the Garmin tribe. This time, the airport is large, and unlike the one in Valencia, it’s not filled with runners returning to their cities after a big race. The race has almost half the attendance of Valencia or Hamburg. But I’m happy this time since I managed to smash my personal best even though the running gods weren’t smiling.

Ten days before the race, I got COVID-19, and memories of this spring and how a nasty flu almost didn’t allow me to run in Hamburg became vivid. Thankfully, I was lucky and didn’t have any significant symptoms. Four days later, I was clear and only missed one run. I went through a small checkup, and on Friday, my wife, my daughter, and my coach boarded a flight to Frankfurt.

We left Athens with 28 degrees Celsius and sunshine and arrived in Frankfurt to 10 degrees and rain. The cold was welcome, but the rain wasn’t. On Saturday, I went out for a small tone-up run and spent the rest of the day resting for the race with the family. Our sister, her husband, and my niece joined us from Brussels in the afternoon, and we had a family get-together.

Sunday was the big day. I slept well and felt OK, but the weather wasn’t. It was raining heavily all morning, but the rain stopped just as we were getting ready to start the race…