BMW BERLIN-MARATHON 2023: The Finisher Magazine

It was only one and a half
years ago that Domenika
Mayer spontaneously decided
to run her first marathon.
And she went out and immediately
won in Hanover with
a time of 2:26:50. It was one
of the fastest debuts of a German
women in the marathon
distance. Four months later,
it was hardly surprising that
she finished sixth at the European
Championships in Munich
and was the second-best
German woman in the marathon,
even winning gold with
the DLV team. Nonetheless,
no one expected her to finish
a good three minutes faster at
the BMW BERLIN-MARATHON.
No one but Domenika: “I knew
I could run 2:24. The training
was good, all the data were
right. However, I held back on
predictions beforehand because
I didn’t want to shout
it out,” explained the runner
from LG Telis Finanz Regensburg.
In Berlin, things went really
well for her right from the
start. She reached the halfmarathon
mark in 71:50 minutes.
“But then I had a stinging
pain in my foot. It hurt so much
that I had to decide whether
to keep running or stop. But I
knew that this foot wasn’t going
to get better in four weeks,
so I decided to go through with
it.” Which she did. Despite the
foot pain, she was able to keep
up the pace in the second half
and eventually improved her
best time of 2:26:50 by a good
three minutes to 2:23:47. “I’m
glad my foot held up to the finish,”
she said afterwards.
Her pacesetter played a big
part in her performance. Chris
Thompson from Great Britain
is an experienced and, at 42,
still very fast marathon runner.
In 2010, he won silver at the
European Athletics Championships
in Barcelona in the 10K.
However, he ran his fastest
marathon in 2021 in London in
– 89 –