1500 ft. below

Below

The Merkerser Kristallmarathon is special in a very particular way:It is run in a salt mine,about 500m (1500 ft) below ground. This come with a couple of consequences:

• It is rather dark,so you have to run with a flashlight
• It is rather warm,about 22C,which means you can run a marathon although it is snowing outside
• It is rather dry. Humidty in the saltmine was about zero and you could litteraly feel the moisture being sucked right out of you
• It is rather hilly. The tunnels in the mine follow the natural structure of the stone. The race had about 800m of incline.
• The race is run in 13 loops of about 2 miles,which makes waterstops easy to organize and working. Also,even with minimal effort you get some sort of cheer.

The course was a little short,it was much more taxing than I thought,but although I still had to make extensive walk-breaks,I already feel much better than in Curitiba in November.