Bärenfels-Holy-Eve-Marathon in Neubrücke/Nahe, Germany

I already arrived on Tuesday 23rd of December and I slept at the house of the Fellers (the organization of the Bärenfels Holy-Eve-Marathon). Because of that, I was one of the first at the start. At 6am nobody there, just a few helpers. The first runners arrived before 7am. And even that was early enough, because the start of the marathon was at 8am. According to the preregistration there was a new record of runners at the Marathon. About 70 people planned to take part at this spectacle.

The course was similar to the years before on an 8.5km loop, which had to be run five times. The course was uphill for the first three kilometres, similar to the summer event. Starting at the bottom of the Bärenfels it was more or less downhill until the end of the loop. Different to the summer edition there were only good wood paths to run. This was good, because of the time of the year and the weak weather forecast. But we were lucky with the weather. It was dry, light fog and about 0°C. So the course was almost clean. The only problems were on the first and last 300m of the loop. The fog came down, became frozen and the asphalt was very slippery. Compare to the last years the speed of race was much quicker. A small group of five persons (included me) broke out at beginning on. One of us got off the race after the third loop. The other four placed 1-3 (two people on place 3). When we came back from the fourth loop the 8.5km runners met us. Their start was at 10am. Because of that, we had to find our way to pass the short distance runners.

Past the race, most of the runners took the showers at the next village. The award ceremony was at 1:30pm at the Movietown (cinema). I was not present there, because I had to take the train back.

Results of the organisation
Homepage of the organisation