Route: In Ringbahn We Trust (Germany)

The route runs along the entire Berlin Ringbahn track, and gives a better overview of the city and it's diverse neighborhoods than the Berlin marathon could ever hope for. You can also claim to have bagged an Ultra as the route is mildly longer than your usual run-of-the-mill marathon. You can complete the course clock-wise or counter-clockwise. Either way, starting and end-point remain the same, as we're dealing with a circular route.

Counter-clockwise routedescription: Starting in the Wedding, a rather grubby-looking district in the north, a runner heads down towards the first station: S-Bahnhof Wedding. From here on, you follow the tracks into the West of the city, the part of the city controlled by the Western Allies after WWII. The houses and grubbiness of the place changes significantly as you leave Wedding/Mitte and head on into Charlottenburg/Wilmersdorf. You'll know that you've left Wedding/Mitte once the parks turn greener (and cleaner) around you. You even get to wave at Schloss Charlottenburg (from a distance, unless you want to wander off-route). But soon enough, it's time to leave the clean, kinda-bourgeois West and as you cross the tracks by having to walk literally onto and across the station at "Südkreuz" to stay on route, you'll have navigated yourself smack-dab from Tempelhof/Schöneberg right into Friedrichshain/Kreuzberg. Passing over the Tempelhofer Feld, the abandoned airfield where American soldiers used to drop food, candy from their "Rosinenbomber" (Candy Bombers) during the Soviet Blockade of West Berlin in 1948/49.

Once you leave the Feld, and cross Sonnenallee, you're back in East Berlin. This area is a great place to resupply by stopping at a local Kebab store (do give Ayran drinks a try, they're yummy, salty yoghurt-based refreshments)! The sights unfortunately are a bit reminiscent of the grubbiness of Wedding. But the view when you pass over the bridge towards Westkreuz, overlooking the Spree, the Molecule Man and the Berliner Fernsehturm (TV Tower, which is never far out of sight during this entire run) makes up it. You're heading towards Lichtenberg now, and though the grey concrete buildings that sit along Storkower Straße and the like, the good news is: you're almost back at the start. All you have to do is make it past all the cute and distracting cafés of Prenzlauer Berg, a place notorious for its gentrification (and for how popular it is among young families). Once you leave Prenzlauer Berg and head into Pankow, you'll head up on the Humboldthain Bunker Berlin (constructed by the Nazis, now look-out point and infamous for the crimpy climbing you can do on its walls).

Congratulations. Take a moment to enjoy the view, then jog back down essentially the only vertical meters you'll have collected on this entire run (Berlin has no elevation profile for all I can tell) and appreciate the last 2KM as your cool-down as you finish the loop that is the route "In Ringbahn We Trust".

Depending on conditions, you might even have been faster than an S-Bahn running along those very tracks. Enjoy this unique view of Berlin!