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

Yes, it is Christmas again. One more year almost passed and small groups of runner meet for the Bärenfels-holy-eve-marathon. The amount of participants still rise. As a runner it was a small Christmas present to ours self, when we entered the event. I arrived already at December 23rd at the Fellers. I slept there. At the time of my arrival the Fellers still were at the Movietown and gave out the start numbers. So I had the chance to talk with some friends. Compared to last year there were more pre entries. There were two reasons. Christmas was on a Saturday this year. So less people had to work. On the other hand there was no snow this year. Last year we had an onset of winter with over frozen wetness. So that stopped a lot of people to come.

At the next morning Robert got up very early. At 6am radio SWR called him to make an interview. Besides that there was much work to do as well as give out the start numbers. Andrea and I arrived just past 7am. It was the first time that Andrea did not help. Instead she took part at the race herself. At 8:15am 87 runners started for the 6th holy eve marathon. Besides the Marathon there was also a half marathon, an 8.5km course and a 2km kid run. From beginning on Herrmann Carsten leaded the race. Stegbauer Matthias was not far behind him. Between them and us (René and me) were a few other runners. René as well as I did not do a lot of running previous. So we started slowly. The course did not change. There were five loops. The first third of the loop was uphill to the bear rock. At the feet of the rock we made a left turn. The beginning of the second third was downhill. Then we stayed on that level. At the last third we went down till we reached the turn around point. We saw a lot of runners, because we had a long two way part. After the short distance races started it was very full on the course. In the end Carsten won just before Matthias. Instead of a Lebkuchen heart we received a Lebkuchen bear as a medaille.

After the race most of the runners went for shower before we met to at the Movietown. The award ceremony was there. We were lucky with the weather. At the morning it was quiet windy, but when we started the wind stopped. Without some rain drops it was dry. While to while the sun broke through before she finally disappeared.