Now it is done. Daniel and I have done the Vienna City Marathon 2006. Especially Daniel did really well and finished his first marathon even with a lot of pain in his knee. All my respect to him!!! All together it was a great long weekend in Vienna. I've arrived on Friday night and have spent some really pleasant day together with Daniel and his family.
Saturday, we went to the runny fair and got our starting numbers, bought some Power Bar's for the run and met Daniels family at a nice Italian restaurant at downtown Vienna. After our pasta break we almost went directly to the Kaiserschmarn Party at the Vienna townhall - was just jummy again.
On Sunday morning we had to get up really early, 6am, to be right on time at the marathon start. Than the time runs and it was 9 o'clock, the start time! The race went quite well for me and until KM 35 I couldn't feel any pain at all but from this point on it have been looong 7.2 kilometers. Daniel did well until KM 35 as well and than he got some trouble with his knee and had to walk the rest of the distance - but he made it to the finish line, even if he had to master barricades like fallen Coka Cola banners, street cleaning machines and the final overtaking smart car and a Japanese co-runner who was teasing him :-)
Daniel finished his first marathon within 5:38:21 hours and I finished it in 4:17:54 hours, almost 10 min. faster as Berlin 2005.
To get more information about our detailed times just click here and enter 2254 for Daniel and 2889 for me.
Finally on Monday we drove to Bad Tratzmansdorf and went to the thermal pools there to relax our old bones and get back into a good shape for the next run at the upcoming Saturday in Bern - the Bern GP, the most beautiful 10 miles of the wold.