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MY JOURNEY - When your wedding date is set around the marathon calendar

23 days. 23 fates. 23 stories to the 41st BMW BERLIN-MARATHON.

2014-09-06

Laura and Darren
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Here is the story of Darren (runner) and his wife Laura from Cardiff, Wales, whose wedding is closely related to the BMW BERLIN-MARATHON:

When did Darren start running a marathon?

Darren has been running ever since I have known him. I think he uses it as an excuse to get out of cleaning the house. Also as a way to bribe me to give him leg rubs! He has done a few marathons before, but he had his heart set on Berlin this year.

What was the biggest sacrifice you had to make to support your husband's passion?

Mainly that we moved our entire wedding so we could go on honeymoon, and he could make sure he still had enough time to train afterwards to fit in with the BMW BERLIN-MARATHON dates.

This is a big sacrifice!

Oh yes. He then however found out that Berlin had turned into a ballot entry and after a very tense wait, we found out that unfortunately he had not been successful, so we had moved the entire wedding for no reason.

Oh no. What happened then?

I wrote a begging letter to the organisers explaining the situation and pleading with them to make an exception for Darren, which they very kindly did. So I had the best wedding gift for him.

What did he say when he found out you succeeded?

It couldn’t have been better timing. I heard he had gotten an entry on the same day we found out his grandparents were unable to attend the wedding, which was a huge disappointment. It was the perfect way of cheering him up. At first he didn’t believe me, but when I read him the letter, a huge smile spread across his face, and he went for a run that very afternoon.

And finally... how was the wedding and how was the honeymoon? Did Darren train the whole time?

The wedding was absolutely perfect. The weekend in August we had originally planned was very wet and windy, so it was a good job we moved the date! We went to Croatia for honeymoon and Darren did do a few training runs. In his words, Croatia would be a lovely place to go for a run if it wasn’t so hot and hilly! Luckily the sea could cool him down on his return!