Brush With Greatness

Today is probably the first time I’ve gotten a chance to be an eyewitness to the setting of a world record.

I know what you’re thinking.

Neat.

But you’re probably thinking it in a disinterested, ironic way.

Still.  I took a look at the route map for the Berlin Marathon a couple days ago, wondering vaguely whether I should go and cheer as the runners went by.  Such was the depth of my enthusiasm that when I saw that the route went right by my front door, I still debated the pros and cons.

In the end, I let my subconscious decide, going to bed without setting an alarm.  When I woke up at 8:48, mere minutes before the marathon was scheduled to start, I took it as a sign, put on my fuzzy UCLA sweatshirt, and toddled downstairs.

I kind of thought I’d be pushing my way out my front door into a crowd, but it was just me and this Asian couple with cameras.  Since my apartment is on Kilometer 4, we didn’t have to wait long to start snapping photos, and there he was, running in a cocoon of siren lights, the legendary Haile Gebrselassie, certainly up there on my list of favorite Ethiopian Hailes.  Doing his final sprint to the finish line, poor guy, didn’t anybody tell you that there’s still 36 kilometers and most of Berlin yet to see?

After watching also-rans for a while, I went back up to my apartment, and not too much later, discovered online that Haile had beaten the previous world record (also set in Berlin, since we don’t have topology here) by half a minute. 

Yup.  That’s right.

Neat.

(P.S.  the original title for this blog entry was “Heil Haile”… just checking, that would offend, like, everybody, right?)