Hannover Marathon

 

Hannover, Germany

Sunday, April 12, 2026

Background:  I applied to enter the Rotterdam Marathon via lottery back in September 2025.  Matthew and his friend Andrew got in, I did not.  But there was a glimmer of hope as I got a notice that there would be another lottery with limited slots on December 1.  And then I got rejected again.

So at that point I registered for the Hannover Marathon on the same day and same hour, and booked non-refundable flights and non-refundable hotels for Jana and me.  (The savings was in the hundreds of dollars versus the refundable fare.)

Not far into my training block, things fell apart that I couldn't have accounted for:

• 6 weeks before marathon:   fell cross-country skiing, and badly bruised my a rib and my chest wall muscles; tried but failed to run through it, took a week off from running and then started back in slowly
• 2 weeks before marathon:  fell crossing a river on a trail run (I had actually stopped to walk across it, but no matter) and broke 3 ribs
• 1 week before marathon:  wrist surgery for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Each incident required some time off and adjustments to run.  After the first rib injury, I already figured my marathon would be much slower, but after the second one just two weeks out, I questioned whether I would be able to run the marathon at all.  To add insult to injury, the same day was in the ER learning about my broken ribs, I got an e-mail from Rotterdam Marathon saying they had a slot for me and gave me a special link to sign up.  That's nice I guess, but who makes marathon plans two weeks out?  And I already had the non-refundable flights and hotels, and was questionable on a DNS.

Stuck with my plans for Hannover Marathon, walked for the next 5 days, then walk/jog for 2 days, and finally able to run albeit slowly for the final 7 days leading up to the marathon.  Longest run in 6 weeks was just 10 miles.

Marathon expo:  Probably more walking (3 miles) than I should have done the day before the marathon, but while I was firm in my plans to start the marathon now, I lacked confidence in being able to finish it, and even if I did, my time was out the window.

We walked first to the start/finish area at the New Town Hall.  One of the most beautiful town halls I've ever seen:

Overlooking the lake and back side of the Hannover New Town Hall
(the start/finish line are on the opposite side of the Town Hall)

Start / finish area

Expo itself was inside of a stadium where the local football (soccer) club played.  Other than not having my "start number" information ready on my phone, it all went quick and easy.

Overlooking the Heinz von Heiden Arena
Note:  the bib is HUGE!

Cool VW vans were official vehicles in the race, 
with this one displaying the current CR of 2:06:05

Decent race shirt
Puma short-sleeve tech

Race day:  The marathon start time was a rather late 10am, exactly the same start time as Rotterdam Marathon.  Not sure if that is a northern European thing, as other than Boston, every other marathon I've run in the US started much earlier, typically 7am or 8am, with Honolulu being an outlier with a 5am start due to the heat.

Normally I don't like a 10am start as it can get warm by midday, but in the case of Hannover, it was just 47°F at the start, and 54° when I finished.   Wind was light at 5-7mph.  I took take a few degrees cooler, but really pretty good overall.

I used the .8 miles from the hotel to the start as a warm-up, and then just before the start I had to walk the last few hundred meters as it got crowded.  The bathroom line was pretty short, and then I arrived at my corral (Corral B) and showed my bib with just over 15 minutes to the start.  For runners already in the corral and lined up on the road, there was an exit/re-entry onto nearby grass to pee.  Mostly men not surprisingly, but a few women as well went onto the grass to pee one final time pre-race, so I took that same option about 5 minutes out.

The race announcements were entirely in German, with the only English language exception being "Please welcome runners today from the UK, USA, Canada, and Australia".  From five minutes until the start, every minute was counted down.

Race goal:  Normally it would be something just sub-3 hours, but honestly for today, it was truly only a goal of finishing, and finishing with the time limit of 6 hours.  My much adjusted plan was to run 8-minute miles as long as I could and then run/walk. With 10 miles being my longest run in the past 6 weeks with the two rib injuries, I figured maybe I'd get 20K before walking.  So my guess was about 4 hours, maybe a little longer.

Race start:  The last ten seconds were counted down (in German of course), and then the race was off.  Not for me, as it took me two minutes to get to the start, with all but the last 30 seconds of those two minutes being a crowded walk.  With my time being out the window, and intentionally not starting near the front of Corral B, it was fine with me if the course remained crowded for the first mile or two.  But it didn't.  I was running around people in my way going much slower for maybe a 1/4 mile, and then after that I had plenty of room.

Waiting for the start.  I'm in corral B, which you can see
on the far right hand side on yellow flags.

And we're off.  Well, not me yet but I'll be at the start
in 1 minute 58 seconds.

At the end of the first KM, I was greeted by a German handheld sign that read, "Nur noch 41KM!" (only 41KM to go!).  Yeah, that's pretty cruel.  I've seen "Only 25 miles to go" signs in US marathons.  There were many handheld signs that it helped to pass the time to read, including:

• "Pain is temporary; Strava is permanent"
• "Hot girls run marathons!"
• "Du läufst besser als DB" (You run better than Deutsche Bahn [the German train system])
• "Nur noch 41KM!" (Only 41KM to go!) and an attractive woman holding "Ist Das dein Gel oder bist Du froh mir sehen?" (Is that your gel or are you happy to see me?)

From 2KM to 4KM, we were running on the shores of the Maschsee ("Masch Lake"), a manmade lake that was probably the prettiest area on the whole course.

In the first 10 miles, I was running mostly 7:20s and 7:30s paces, but that's quite a bit faster than what I had planned, my ribs were certainly bothering me, and the faster I ran the worse they felt, so I consciously tried to back off a bit and settled into 7:40s.

I passed runners wearing different team singlets, including some Hannover running clubs, "Sunday Running Club", and surprisingly a number of people running for the "Anti Fascism Running Club".  It seems odd that such a team would exist at all, but perhaps in reaction to a rise in many far right groups of late.  I'll leave politics out of this, but it was a surprise.

I was looking forward to seeing Jana at 13KM in, and of course she didn't disappoint.  She has been great to accompany me on my crazy adventures around the world.  

Nice pics from Jana as I approached her near the 13K mark.

Shortly after seeing Jana, we head into the Eilenriede Park, where I have run twice on this trip.  While not quite the same as the section along the Maschsee (lake), this was rather scenic and natural in its own way.  At about 15KM in,  a group of 5 pretty German girls screamed my name (which was on my bib).  Some yelled "Jeffrey" and others "Yeffrey" (in German, Js are pronounced like a Y), but it's all good, and I slapped their five outstretched hands as I ran past my new fan club.

We leave the park for a few miles, and re-enter it about 22K, just after the half split, which I go through in 1:39:55.  I really like the park roads section of the marathon and am feeling pretty good through here.  

This is not from this year's marathon, but this photo shows
the same park road that we run on.  Narrow but I had plenty
of room.  (Only the smaller field marathon runs through here,
not the half marathon.)

About 25K we merge with the half-marathoners and will remain with them for the rest of the race, except for about a 3K section.  This adds a lot more runners to the course, as there about 3 times as many half-marathon marathoner runners as compared to the full, but there is still plenty of room given how far into the race we are.

When the ribs started to really hurt about 25K in, I told myself to just run 1 more KM, and then I could walk.  This reminded me of a Fidelity boss who was a heavy smoker early in his life, and he said he never quit completely, as that would be too tough, but he quit one day at a time, and that was more than 20 years ago.  Similarly, in that spirit, when I reached the next KM marker, I told myself again to just run 1 more KM, and then I could walk. Mind over matter.

Eclectic mix of music on the course, from German language pop to The Police, Kenny Loggins, a drum corps, bagpipers, and my personal favorite late in the race when I needed it most, Van Halen!

There were a few sections especially towards the end when we ran over cobblestone, but they weren't rough and they were very short just to connect one road to another.  As I've also mentioned before, I much prefer races marked in kilometers as unlike waiting for mile markers to appear, they pass so much quicker!  When I saw the 37KM sign, I was confident I could finish this race without walking or stopping.  And I did!

Final result:  3:21:02 net, 3:22:59 gun.   Results here

Long walk from the finish line until the marathon runners' exit.  In this area, I got my medal, water, and a few interesting post-race food selections they were giving out:

Surprisingly, I found Jana pretty easily, or she found me.  Long painful 1-mile walk back to the hotel, but having run the entire marathon without stopping, on 3 broken ribs, I was ecstatic!  Obviously a slow result for me, but given the circumstances, I was very happy with that.  

The marathon was very well organized, and it was a fun experience.  That was my 30th marathon!  Hopefully for my 31st marathon, Chicago in October, I will be healed, healthy, and ready to go.