A year before the 1990 Berlin Marathon, the ground beneath the Brandenburg Gate was a mined death strip you'd have been shot for crossing. That September, runners jogged straight through it. The course change wasn't cosmetic.
Eight men's marathon world records fell in Berlin between 2003 and 2022 — more than any other course. That's not luck. The route is engineered flat: wide gentle turns, a long straight finish.
Berlin isn't fast because runners are faster there. The course was built for it — flat, wide, deliberately engineered — and it's quietly manufactured more world records than anywhere else. Kipchoge's record is the course's record too.
New episode: Periodization in Distance Running. We trace it back to Leo Matveyev, the Soviet scientist who turned coaching instinct into a written system — and unpack why peak fitness is perishable, so every plan works backward from race day. Give it a listen.