Hello dear readers,

Lets us introduce ourselves, we are Brigitte and Claudia from Berlin. Some of you may know us because you have seen us running or jogging through Gran Alacant. Running is one of our biggest hobbies and that’s why when we saw a post in the GA Advertiser Magazine asking readers to share their Covid-19 stories, we wanted to share ours….

We have played soccer for decades, but are too old for it now (60 and 48). So we decided to reoriente ourselves and felt that running could become our new favourite sport. We have begun training for running a half marathon and were thrilled when we were asked if we wanted to join the Gran Alacant Runners. Recently we ran with Philippe from GA Homefinders at the Benidorm Half Marathon and were looking forward to running in the planned Abel Anton cross-country race and the Half Marathon in Elche.

But then Covid-19 came and everything changed. All runs were cancelled, as were our flights back to Berlin. Now, like everyone else, we have been under house arrest for over four weeks. So it was time to come up with something new to pursue our hobby.

After we “walked” on the spot in the living room or on the terrace for almost four weeks, we started to get bored with it. So we started searching the internet.

In Berlin we have participated in a few hikes/runs (55 km and 100 km) with the organizer mammutmarsch. And lo and behold, this time too we found what we were looking for. A 100 km hike at home, with a maximum time of 24 hours (hikeathome). We just had to participate!!! So we signed up and started to make plans. Do we run or hike? The decision was made quickly, we would try to run it. However, would we just run on the spot or do a parkour (using obstacles)?
As well as on the spot running on the terraces, we decided to use the entire house. Our plan was to go inside from the terrace in front of the house, through the living room, down to the basement, turn around there and run back up to the ground floor. From there we would go to the first floor, up onto the roof, run a lap around there and then go back down to the front terrace. We created a small video and uploaded it to facebook so that our friends in Germany could see it and promised to keep them posted. So then we thought about what catering we would need for a 100 km run. We bought everything from muesli, fruit, cakes, nuts, isotonic drinks and wine gum (despite the corona bottlenecks) and set up different food stations.

The start was set for the 11th April, Easter Saturday, at 11 o’clock. There was a livestream on youtube and over 500 people took part in the race. We made our first food stop after about 20 km and enjoyed some cake. Until then, everything was very easy. We had planned that we would make a refreshment stop every 20 km …. However, after we had run about 30 km our neighbours took pity on us and delivered freshly made tuna pastries, of course you can’t say no. So we paused a little earlier and enjoyed our surprise dinner. For dessert, we treated ourselves to vanilla ice cream with fruit salad. We then walked for 1/2 km before we felt it was ok to run again. At the 60 km point we stopped for cake again … we seemed to be craving

sugar … We slowly started to be aware of pain in our feet, but giving up was not an option. To our great joy we enjoyed a live concert that a neighbour was giving from his roof at 8 pm. Ok, it wasn’t just for the two of us, but it gave us another motivation boost. On the youtube live chat we could see that the majority of the participants had already finished … At our fourth and last refreshment stop at 80 km we no longer wanted food, instead, we put our feet up and spent quarter of an hour on the couch. Honestly, the last 20 kms were really hard. Our feet ached and the running sections between the breaks became shorter and shorter. But our motto was still: giving up is not an option. Finally, after 16 hours and 11 and 15 minutes, we had reached our 100 km goal. It was just after 3 am and as a reward, we enjoyed a beer ? We went to bed at 4.30 am exhausted but happy.

Besides us, about 10 people had managed to cover 100 km or more. The craziest even managed 150 km. On Saturday, 18th April there is another hikeathome, so we may have to renew this article before publishing …
We hope our videos and photos give you an idea of our experience. Maybe it will inspire some of you to do a virtual run or just try something different. And if virtual running is not for you, you can always take a look at what the Gran Alacant Runners will be up to after Covid-19.

Until then, hold on everyone, take care of yourself and stay healthy … Keep on running!