In October 2022, I moved for one month from Belgium to Berlin. This was a great experience and since I really love to run in new places (and I was also training for my first ever half marathon) I tried to run as much as possible during my stay here. In this post, I’m going to share all of my running related experiences with you (spoiler alert: this city is great if you want to run in unique places and meet new people!)
Running solo
Running on the runway
I found a lovely apartment in Neukölln for my one month stay here. Neukölln is a lively district in the south of Berlin that’s very close to one of the most unique running scenes you can find in Berlin: the former Tempelhof Airport. The Tempelhofer Feld served as one of Berlin’s biggest airports from 1922 up to its last flight in 2008 and served as an important piece of infrastructure during the Cold War. In June 1948, the former Soviet Union blocked both the road-, train- and ship-access from the Western Allies to West-Berlin, causing them to transport all required goods for West-Berlin via airplanes. And it is the Tempelhofer Airport that was used (among others) for this famous airlift.
In 2008, the airport was closed since the government of the Brandenburg wanted to concentrate all air traffic operations on one big airport (Berlin Brandenburg Airport Willy Brandt) and the old airport serves as a very big park area for all of Berlin’s residents since then. Since all of the existing infrastructure is kept, you can still run on the original runways today. This proves to be a very unique experience. Seeing the old taxiways and very big white direction markers on the asphalt makes you feel as if you’re about to lift off. If only I could run this fast… 😁
During the summer, this park can be very busy and is used by the residents of Berlin to grill, eat, dance and hangout together which creates a very pleasant atmosphere that makes you want to stay there forever.
Since the old airport is very large, it provides enough space for everyone. Running around the field comes down to about 6 km and is clearly marked with a red line (including distance markers every few hundred meters). You can also run on the runways themselves, which are 2094m and 1840m long and are interconnected with each other. If you don’t like to run on hard surfaces, you can chose to run on some of the smaller trails that run all the way through the grass, but these are very uneven and not very accessible.
Treptower Park
Treptower park is also located very close to Neukölln and proves to be a good running location for hot days. Since the Tempelhofer Feld almost only consists of grass and asphalt with very few trees, this is not an ideal location to run on warm summer days (and Treptower Park can be a good replacement then). In the middle of the park you will find a big Soviet War Memorial that commemorates the Soviet soldiers that fell in the Battle of Berlin.
If you want to run a little longer, you can start at the S-Bahn station Baumschulenweg and run alongside the banks of the river Spree until you arrive at the S-Bahn station Treptower Park. You can add multiple rounds of running over the little paved walkways that are spread all throughout the park. Feel free to take a look at this Strava activity to get some inspiration.
Running with other people
Midnight runners
Berlin is home to a lot of international people that come from all over the world. When you arrive as a new person in a city and want to meet some potential new friends, I can really recommend the Midnight Runners. This is an international running club that exists in big cities all over the world (New York, London, Paris, Mexico City, …) who organise a lot of interesting runs in the evenings and weekends. Every Wednesday evening you can join the Midnight Runners for their iconic 10k bootcamp run, but prepare yourselves, this is not just a regular 10k run. During a bootcamp run, everyone is encouraged to run at their own pace (between 4 and 6 min / km) and every 2 km the whole group stops running, starts doing body exercises and waits until everyone has arrived before continuing for the next 2 km stretch.
There are typically a little over 100 people that join these Wednesday events and it’s a very nice way to get to know some more international people in Berlin. You will be accompanied with uplifting music all throughout the run which creates this very nice, almost party-like, atmosphere that pushes you forward. You are not required to pay anything to join the runs, everything is completely free, and if you participate in 10 or more activities, you will be rewarded with a free “Midnight Runners” shirt. Since I was only here for a month, I unfortunately never reached 10 activities and need to return somewhere in the future to complete this achievement 😊.
Bootcamp run through the city center
During the bootcamp run that’s organised by the Midnight Runners we first run along the river Spree followed by a very big roundabout where you can see the Siegessäule, straight through the famous Großer Tiergarten park until the Brandenburger Tor. Right in front of the Brandenburger Tor, you will be asked to do the third set of body weight exercises and you’ll immediately notice that this draws the attention of the tourists that are visiting Berlin. After this short but hard interruption the course continues along the Reichstag and Berlin Hauptbahnhof. Since I was only here during the month of October, I only saw the course at night when all the iconic landmarks are lit up.
Click here to see one of my recorded Strava activities of this beautiful run if you ever want to try it yourself.
Social trail running in the Grunewald Forest
During the weekends, some of the Midnight Runner members organise trail runs with a length between 14 km and 18 km in the green areas around Berlin. Since I was in the middle of training for my first ever half marathon, I could only join once but I had a really good time. We agreed to meet at the Schlachtensee, about half an hour from the city centre by train. The first part of the course we ran alongside this Schlachtensee on a sandy but firm terrain. After a few kilometers, we left the water behind us and moved over to the Grunewald forest. The weather was cold, but without a cloud in the sky and the yellow, red and brown autumn colours in the forest made the course look like a place from a movie.
Check this activity on Strava out if you’re interested in the course that we followed during this run.
Cheering on the Berlin Marathon runners
I was lucky enough to be in Berlin at the same time the legendary Berlin Marathon 2022 took place. Berlin Marathon is one of the 6 World Major Marathons that a lot of people are pursue to run. If you finish all of them, you receive a special “6 star finisher” medal. In 2022, the Marathon took place on September 26. This was immediately a very special edition of the Berlin Marathon since the marathon world record was broken again by Eliud Kipchoge with a spectacular time of 2:01:09 (he did run a sub 2-hour marathon before, but this attempt is not recognized as an “official” world record).
In the morning, I witnessed the fastest runners passing by around Hermannplatz (close to the former Tempelhof airport), which is situated at kilometer 17 of the course. As far as the eye could reach, I saw runners flowing through. Some looking fresh, some looking a little less fresh 😅 (17 km is already quite the distance, so I could feel a lot of sympathy for those poor runners out there 😆).
In the afternoon, I moved to a place very close to the finish line (near the Brandenburger Tor) where I could see all runners trying their best to sprint and finish as fast as they can. The sun came through at this time of the day and the general atmosphere was really great. There were a lot of supporters cheering on everyone that was struggling at this point. A few runners where carrying a Ukrainian flag in support of Ukraine during the ongoing war and every time one of these runners passed by, everyone in the crowd was cheering “Ukraina” together. It was at this moment that I really started to feel that we are all in this together and I my skin was completely covered in goosebumps. A marathon is something magical and really brings people from different places, different cultures and different backgrounds together and this is such a beautiful thing to experience.
This event was already one of the highlights of my stay in Berlin and really made me want to run this marathon myself one day. I did subscribe to the lottery for the 2023 edition of the Berlin Marathon, but results will only be made public at the end of November.