Maren H. (in the middle) decided that the office should take part in this year's JPMorganChase Corporate Challenge in Frankfurt, which involves sending a team of runners (ha, ha) to the 5.5 km race held on June 13th, the largest race of its kind in the world. She had t-shirts made for us so that we looked like we were serious contenders.
When we arrived at our local train station there were a number of other participants already there, even though we had decided to take an early train. Notice Ingrid' s cast, which to her credit did not prevent her from taking part.
There were four of us altogether. You might ask where Frank is. He suddenly had to be in Hannover all day on the 13th but has sworn that he will take part next year. Connie is also missing from our group, but she suddenly had to fly to Poland to visit her husband who is working there now. She has also sworn that she will be with us next year. I've included so many pictures of the four of us to make us look like we were a formidable group.
Actually this is the wrong picture, as I have just noticed. It should be one of our backs to show what was on the other side of the t-shirts. I will have to wait to fix that until we are back in Germany I'm afraid because the computer I am using here in Canada is not very user friendly and as slow as molasses.
When we arrived in Frankfurt it was easy enough to find the way to the start. All we had to do was follow the crowds. We were lucky that the weather was almost perfect. I was just a little on the warm side even at 7:30pm, which was the time of the official start.
It was awesome being in Frankfurt among the many skyscrapers, walking through the streets with no traffic.
99.9% of the people we saw were taking part in the race, but this SMOKER obviously had other plans.
The teams were very colorful and some of them, like the big banks and telephone companies, quite large. One of the largest was the German train company. Ulf, where were you??? And Tony, see you next year, right? We'll remind you to register in time!
Notice the sign "Richtzeit ueber 40 minutes". This was our starting position as it was the slowest position available. It meant that everyone in front of us expected to finish the race in less than 40 minutes. My personal goal was to finish in less than an hour!
We sat on a wall next to the sidewalk for the next hour and watched the hoards pass us by.
The atmosphere was very festive and everyone was in a great mood. There were balloons and some costumes and lots of amusing t-shirts to read.
Shortly before the start our position had filled up.
This is looking in the other direction at the people behind us - for the time being. We thought we heard the starting signal, but nothing happened for a long time. Then the crowds slowly started to move and after 46 minutes we finally arrived at the start. It takes a while for 67,000 people to get out of your way!
At one point in the race there was a huge screen where spectators could watch the runners go by and the companies were called out - us too! Ingrid was asked where Frank was by a client from Siemens who obviously read her t-shirt.
This is Ingrid racing over the finish line an hour and six minutes later. But where has she left her husband?
We didn't have to wait too long for him. But you might ask where are the crowds of runners? I have to mention here that the fastest runners reached the finish line long before we reached the starting line! And the rest of them spent all their energy and ambition overtaking us.
This is the official picture of Maren and myself crossing the finish. I am pretending to run, but Maren did run the whole way. She just slowed her speed down to match my walk. It looks like I didn't reach my goal of under an hour (you have to subtract the starting time of 46 minutes) but we spent a lot of time standing and waiting for the others, so I'm sure my time was under an hour and it may even have been under 50 minutes. WOW!
In all justice I should mention that the fastest runners came in at well under 15 minutes.
And what was our prize for all this effort? As many bananas as we could eat!
No, actually we got a bright green t-shirt with "finisher" on it to prove that we are accomplished runners.
This is a medieval depiction of the town and in general things have not changed too much. The 14th century church at the foot of the hill is still standing although we didn't go inside as it was Sunday morning and there was a service being held. 
