Berlin Marathon with Adidas and Brendahashtag

Once every few years, it hits me that I would like to be a runner.

To me, it’s the coolest sport there is. So physically humbling—you can’t hide behind your reformer machine, there are no impressive looking weights, you can’t rush through it, and you can’t do it in secret like your YouTube yoga. There’s no cheat code. It’s like extreme exposure therapy to your strength, or weakness. I have always admired runners, who seem to just put on their shoes and go. It feels, to me, like trying to raw dog a nine-hour flight with no podcast, no WIFI, no movies, just me and the flight map. I see my friends get ready to “go for a quick run” and I want to ask if they had to hype themselves up for five hours to do this, if they know how far they’ll go, where they’ll go, and how they know it’s time to turn around.

Unwilling to practice, in my biennial attempts, I obviously try the zero to one hundred approach, and am exposed to my weakness each time. My lungs are in my throat, I hated every second of it, and people saw me turn around in the middle of the street. As there is no feeling of accomplishment, I give up after the first try. See you again in two years. Plus, my TikTok has been showing me videos of people getting “runner’s face,” probably not a real thing, but it seemed more plausible to happen to me than ever getting a “runner’s high.”

I told Adidas about my motivational problem. They said I should come experience the Berlin marathon with them. But I have seen people run before. How will that help?

Like a lot of Berliners, I only realize that it is the day of the marathon when I have somewhere to be and all the roads are blocked with no way to get to the other side of the city. So, this was the first year that I knew when the marathon would be happening.
We meet the day before the big day at the Adidas running space hosted at ANTI, a Brutalist building in the middle of the city where a few of my friends go to work out sometimes. On marathon weekend, the space turned into a popup for independent brands that are on a mission to run, in their own style. I’ve heard of ante for a while, a cool group of boys that aim to bridge the gap between performance and fashion. One of the founders, Julian Weigl, states that there is not enough swag on the market for running culture. If you care about aesthetics, you will have discovered that it’s a lot easier to dress for Berghain than it is for a 5K. Adidas also brought on Alex Leon and Alex Sandler from Mexico City based running brand Hermanos Koumori, who proudly showed me their Adidas collab running shoe and also brought coffee from Mexico. I loved listening to Julie Hyld from creative agency Hyld Studio talk about why she runs, and that not all running clubs have to fit everyone's needs: because she wants to go fast.

I walk around the rooms filled with cool kids and creative thinkers and wonder if I’ll spot their outfits on Sunday. Most likely not, and that is what everyone seems to agree on—running is the new thing, or has been the new thing, and the customer wants a blend between performance and style. In terms of product, running was somehow not associated with swag until now. When you think about a basketball or football player entering the club, the temperature of the room changes. Granted, they all have stylists now, but running just isn’t paired with fashion for the most part. Plus, a runner can’t afford to run in gimmicks that hinder performance. There are a lot of stylish people who run, but it used to be tricky to be stylish while running.

A few years ago, the average marathon runner, men in their 40s, might not have held panel talks with Adidas in wellness centers in Berlin Mitte about needing more fashionable products. More people than ever signed up this year, 80,000 participants hoping to finish 42.195 kilometers. I tried to find out why that is the distance but there seems to be no real explanation for it, only that it was decided on in 1921. Anyway, according to Berlin Marathon officials, the largest group of this year's runners is between 28 and 38 years old. In the 2000s, the main focus of running was health, but now they list lifestyle and community aspects. And that is what I am witnessing in my environment, too. Many turn to running because these fancy gyms are frankly getting too expensive, and so is everything else in life. If you live in a major city, there are no more free activities. We are in the era of a new members club being announced every week, as if our divide wasn’t big enough already, now we should only socialize with people that have been vetted, economically, by committees.

Running seems to be a counter movement. A sport that is accessible, if your body allows it. All you need is the right footwear. And hopefully a little more perseverance than me with my biennial runs. I got to watch the pros, the first timers, and the celebrities who signed up under aliases (such as Harry Styles who allegedly went by Sted Sarandos) run their final 5 kilometers on Sunday, and seeing strangers cheer on strangers was heartwarming. I have seen 50,000 people in a stadium cheer on one athlete before, but next to me this morning was one woman with a megaphone who cheered on 50,000 runners. As a bystander, nothing new was happening for me, yet I stayed for hours because each face (no runner’s faces by the way) realizing they were at the final stretch was a different story.

From a brand perspective, I have never seen so much coverage about the Berlin marathon like this year. Everyone had a dinner, an activation, a launch in their name. You could argue about who did the most or about the size of the impact of said events. Both winners, Rosemary Wanjiru Monica and Sabastian Sawe, wore Adidas.

And I will not shut up about how impressed I am with anyone who runs—whether that is marathons or around the block. The swag gap between me and the people on the pavement was immense—there are people who try their best and people who never try at all. And maybe this week I’ll start again. I definitely don’t have the excuse of not having the right shoes.