November 9^th marks the unofficial 20^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. On this date in 1989, the East German government announced, after several weeks of civil unrest, that all GDR citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin. The fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for German reunification, which was formally concluded on October 3, 1990.

In 1990 the Berlin Marathon was already 16 years old and had only ran on the west side of the city. The fall of the wall offered a historic opportunity to run both sides of the world famous Brandenburg gate and on September 30^th that year the race took the brave step and unofficially united two divided cities into one.

 Before this historic day many running fanatics had risked their lives crossing the border to participate in the world famous Berlin marathon. Founding race director Horst Milde noted "They had to be careful because if the Eastern state security police would have known, they would be in a difficult situation".

Luckily the historic day came when any German could run free around a soon to be united city. The 1990 race was in such high demand that the races 25,000 limit was over subscribed and thousands missed out. This race turned out to be a historic as the famous pictures of the wall falling days later!

The political significance of that race was enormous and caused worldwide attention. Suddenly people were indeed running across what used to be one of the world's major borders - the line between East and West, where a number of people lost their lives when they tried to flee to the West during the Cold War for most of the last half of the 20th century. TV pictures and newspaper reports of this race appeared worldwide. 
The Berlin Marathon on September 30th, 1990 became the race of the year.

The 2009 race now starts the Autumn marathon season and Berlin is a world marathon major. The race is very popular with 40,000 runners and Berlin is home to the world’s fastest marathon of 2.03.59  (4mins 43secs a mile pace!!!). Sunday’s event will be very interesting as it will again showcase the worlds fastest marathoner and greatest endurance athlete of all time Haile Gebrselassie and put him stride to stride with the World’s second fastest man of all time, Kenyan - Duncan Kibet. Kibet’s personal best of 2:04:27 maybe 28 seconds slower than Haile’s World record but he is in great form and will be a real test for Haile on Sunday. For more information about the elite race click here.

Berlin is not just for the elite, and thousands of charity and fun runners from around the world compete in this wonderful event. If you are interested in running next years event follow this link!

Good luck to the many realbuzzers running Berlin on Sunday and remember that even if you are not quite running as quick as Haile, Berlin has great personal best potential! Also a big "Hi Foot" to everyone running the Great North Run this weekend! Goooo reabuzzers!

Would love to hear from any body out there who has ran Berlin before. Let us know what your experience was like!

Tags: real Berlin Marathon. Berlin Marathon, How the Berlin Marathon helped the Wall Fall, berlin wall and marathon, running through the Brandenburg gate

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