September 15, 2018 – A Hungover Breakfast Run

So last night was a bit of a mess. I misunderstood details and meeting times and just basically gave up. I had some Indonesian food and a glass of wine. I finished off my bottle of red in the room. I slept fitfully, in part due to the room spinning. I was trying to self medicate the hamstring injury and wound up just making things worse.

I really thought alcohol was the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems. Turns out it was no panacea magic bullet.

This morning was the annual Breakfast Run, an untimed fun run for Berlin Marathoners. Here’s the official English language explanation from the website, with some amusing caveats and warnings… or maybe they just seemed funny when I’m a little tipsy… or at the very least a little “wanton mood.”

I think they were going for “fun run” or some such. But I kinda love that it’s a “wanton run.”

So, look. I could ramble on here for a couple hundred words, tell you about the metro ride or meeting up with my Aussie TravellingFit compatriots. I could tell you about how Skippy 2.0, the inflatable kangaroo mascot of TF to make finding the group easier, now wears pants. And pants emblazoned with the Australian flag… which seems like overkill. It’d be like Paul McCartney wearing a Beatles shirt… or me wearing a Kevin shirt.

Oh, um… wait… scratch that.

Nice pants, Skippy.

Rather than just go on and on and on in a Ben Stein monotonous tone…

…I figured I’d once again just throw a bunch of images up against the white background of this blog and see what sticks. It’s lazy and indicative of my mood. I’m worried about tomorrow. My leg is bothering me from just this not-quite-6K and I don’t know if you know this or if it’ll just be dismissed as fake but 42.195K is a lot more than 6K.

In any event:

Meeting in the lobby to head to the Wanton Run

On the metro — you can see Skippy doesn’t have a ticket — he’s a rebel kangaroo.

I like to imagine this guy is a kindergarten teacher and his students wanted to support him… so they made him a macaroni shirt. And now he was stuck having to wear it.

I wasn’t sure I was in the right place — shouldn’t this say “guten Morgen?”

The mascot for the Wanton Run… and I ain’t lion!

Balloons! We released them at the start… I can only assume how many cows died later by eating the deflated.

Cheering on the runners, cheerers running.

This was surprisingly emotional to run along.

Seriously, Jesse Owens was on this track!

Not this track, mind you… but along this route.

Hitler sat there I think. Hitler! I mean… yowza.

I ran into Jacqui, one of my favorite tour leaders who works at a rival tour company.

It was farther than I realized to get back to shower and change and I had to reschedule meeting up with Kate Z (more on that in a moment).

You meet the most interesting people on public transit.

Can anyone say these DIDN’T come from the Berlin Wall?

Maybe just a few… ya know, just in case.

My old Entertainment Today colleague and friend Ginny Z told me her sister was going to be here in Berlin for the marathon. After a few miscommunications on my part as to where to meet, I finally found Kate and we raised an Oktoberfest glass to good luck and good running tomorrow.

Prost!