Berlin: the flattest fast one

Berlin is where marathon world records go. The course is flat, wide and fast, and it makes a drawing that is almost defiantly ordinary.

A large, plain loop

The route is a big loop through the city, out and back around the centre, finishing under the Brandenburg Gate.

As a shape it is irregular but not distinctive: no river doing the work, no peninsula, no section anybody would recognise from geometry alone. Drawn as a clean line it is a large closed curve with some corners.

This is the case where a map underneath is worth it. The streets and the place names turn a generic loop into a specific city, and the finish becomes a location rather than a point.

Leave the profile off

Berlin's total elevation change is small enough that a printed profile is a nearly flat line with some noise on it.

Worse, most of that noise is not terrain. On a course this flat, a barometric altimeter is measuring weather and a GPS altitude is measuring its own uncertainty. A profile here shows the instrument rather than the road.

If the print needs a third number, use the time.

Why it is fast, in case anyone asks

Flat, obviously. Also wide — the field spreads and there is less bunching at the corners than in most big-city races. The buildings shelter long sections from wind. And September in Berlin is usually cool without being cold.

None of that shows on paper, which is a fair summary of what a fast course is: an absence of obstacles rather than the presence of anything.

What to print

Official time. The date. Distance as 42.195.

For a personal best — and Berlin produces a lot of them — this is the one course where putting the time in large type is defensible. It is what the day was for.