Berlin Marathon 2025: Through Heat, Doubt, and 42.2k

Or, "How I Convinced Myself Not to Walk Off at 10k of the Berlin Marathon"

Smiling at the finish line, even though I felt like I was dying.

Everyone has heard by now that the Berlin Marathon on September 21, 2025 was a hot one. In fact, it was the hottest on record. Anecdotally, I saw quite a few runners struggling, and more medical issues than I’ve seen at either of my prior two marathons. According to the numbers, 12.9% of runners who started the race did not finish - higher than average for the race.

I had a lot of big goals going into the day. Berlin is known as one of the fastest and flattest marathons in the world, perfect for an ambitious time goal. As a slower runner, I’ve been caught up in my pace and comparison of my pace for my entire running career, and I’ve worked hard to still show up even when I’ve felt like nothing but failure. But with a solid base, a recent marathon PR, and the course reputation, I thought a time goal this time was appropriate, and dare I say, doable. I was determined to cut over an hour off my previous marathon PR.

And all of that changed with an email from the Berlin Marathon on Thursday. “For race day, we expect a significant rise in temperature.”

We’ve all obsessed over weather forecasts ahead of a big race. My advice usually is “don’t fixate on it, it will change so much before race day, and then won’t you feel silly for wasting all of that energy on your anxiety.” (I say like I don’t routinely waste energy on anxiety all the dang time). Well unfortunately, the Berlin forecast only seemed to get worse, and once the race organizers openly admitted it, I pretty much knew I was screwed.

I was already entering Berlin with even more anxiety than usual ahead of a race.

1. Berlin is notoriously less “back-of-the-pack” friendly than other races, with more stringent cutoffs.

2. I was leaving my dogs for over a week, the longest I have ever left them (my parents very graciously agreed to watch them, which eased the anxiety quite a bit).

3. I was traveling to a new country, with absolutely no idea how the immigration and customs processes worked.

4. I had three (THREE) connecting flights (I hate, hate, hate connecting flights) each way.

5. Duolingo had only prepared me to talk about owls, not actually speak German.

So add in historically warm weather, the warmest marathon I’ve ever run (and maybe my hottest race ever), and I was ready to descend into full panic.

I trained through some terrible heat and humidity, and looking back, that probably saved me. Knowing that I could run through that (and worse), and survive, even if I felt like absolute crap. But there’s a difference between the pressure we put on a training run, and the pressure we put on a race - particularly, when you’ve laid out some hefty time goals AND desperately don’t want to get caught in a strict sweep after traveling 4,400 miles (plus 26.2 more).

In the end, while it wasn’t anywhere near Harry Styles’ time, I did PR my marathon time by a few minutes. It wasn’t the hour-plus I wanted, but on a day where nothing went right, the fact that I came anywhere close to a marathon time I achieved when everything went right is pretty incredible. And a testament to how showing up is more important than showing up perfectly.

I chatted with Taylor on the My First Marathon Podcast about my Berlin experience, so if you want a full breakdown of the race, I highly recommend you check it out here.

But my biggest takeaways from my third, and arguably hardest, marathon are:

1. Have a plan. And a B plan, and a C plan. The second I got that email from the race, my mind started turning. Plan A was looking less likely. So what was Plan B? What was Plan C? How would I set myself up for success? My first marathon, I largely “wung it” (is that a phrase?). I was determined not to do the same this time around. So when Plan B fell apart too, on the course at 10k, I was ready to pivot.

2. Nothing about the marathon is perfect, despite our best efforts to make it so. I didn’t have a perfect training cycle, but it was by far my best one. And still, at the end of the day, the weather had other plans - something I had zero control over. A perfect training cycle would not have fixed that. In fact, it’s probably better that I struggled and had to make adjustments based on heat during training - I was ready to react on race day.

3. Showing up is hard. But showing up is what matters. I contemplated crapping out of this race a number of times, believe it or not. Long before the starting line, and certainly 10k in when I felt like I was going to throw up. But I kept showing up wherever and however I could and made it to the finish line.

4. Nutrition and fueling are SO IMPORTANT. And you should have back up plans for those too. I have always struggled with fueling. I don’t have a scientific approach, it is a very trial-and-error, fuel-as-you-go approach and seeing what works. And I’ve frequently struggled with fueling enough, incapable of shaking the beauty standards of my youth that said thin is better. You might be able to tell that when I’m anxious about something, I tend to avoid it. So if I find a fueling schedule that works for me, I don’t write it down, I just say “I’ll do something similar next time.” But without a strong plan, it was easy to fall off track, particularly when the weather dictated a very different-from-normal approach. I HATE eating when I’m running in the heat, and I knew I’d need more water, but my anxiety around running OUT of water resulted in panicked over-hydration that likely contributed to my problems.

5. Run your own race. I kept hearing “scary” things about Berlin: the cutoff is aggressive. There won’t be water available to you after the first few aid stations (to be fair, this may have only not happened because of the weather forecast). The start line is impossible to navigate. I didn’t find any of these things to be very true, and yet I got all up in my head about them before the race.

6. Make the right decision for you, and only you. We as runners never want to DNS or DNF. I’ve seen so many anguished injury posts lately where people are dropping out of their fall marathons, and I feel so bad for them - but I’m also so inspired that they made that decision. Runners tend to run through literally everything - sickness, injury, dangerous conditions. I saw a lot of runners struggling on the Berlin course, and a lot of runners end up in a medical tent. I very heavily debated not finishing that day. At 10K, it felt literally impossible. I had never felt that horribly that early in a race. And if I had walked off, that would have been 100% ok. It wouldn’t make me less of a runner.

7. Marathons are way more mental than physical. What helped me stay on the course was 1) my back up plan(s); and 2) runner’s math. I gave myself until the half to see if things turned around. Luckily, things had turned around by then (and then they turned back around and came back, and turned back - I mean, we’re talking a real emotional roller coaster out there) and I convinced myself to stick it out. But that battle was ALL mental. Which is why, as I said earlier, those horrible training runs are probably way more valuable than the ones that go to plan.

As I mentioned in a prior post, I’m planning to take a break from marathons after this race. I feel like I’m probably not done with the marathon - even though I feel I left everything on that course, I still have those ambitious time goals I didn’t make, that I’d like to hit some day.

But maybe I’ll try for a winter or spring marathon this time.