Luke - 7

7mi, 55:06 (7:52)

So the last run before this one was the easy run in Eugene Saturday morning before leaving. Sunday morning Zack and I got up early, in Portland, getting to the airport at about 5am. Spent all day flying, ending up in Munich Monday morning. My sister (along with her husband and their 17-month-old son) picked us up at the airport, we dropped our stuff off at their place, and headed to Oktoberfest.

Oktoberfest attracts 7 million people across the two weeks it goes on, so it's huge. There are twelve tents, constructed each year by the participating breweries, each holding six- to ten-thousand people. There are long picnic-style tables and benches where you sit and order a little bit of food and a lot of beer. The beer comes in one size: a one-liter glass stein. That's just over three 12-oz beers' worth, plus the special Oktoberfest recipe is a bit stronger than regular beer at about 6.6%. There's a band in each tent that plays traditional oompa songs, some more contemporary stuff, and lots of drinking songs. Every time they play a drinking song you have to sing along and drink, and whenever a stranger at your table cheerses you you have to drink.

Zack and I had somewhere between four and six beers (liters, that is) each, and after I went on a carnival ride with my sister (we went upside down quite often and I somehow did not throw up) we went home and slept the sleep of people who hadn't rested due to flying for sixteen hours and then drinking all day.

The next day I had the worst hangover of my life (pro tip: drink water!) but Zack and I had more travelling to do. We took a train a couple hours South, to the highest mountain in Germany, Zugspitze. The train ride itself was real rough for me but I was pretty much better after that. We didn't go to the top of Zugspitze because the ride up there was about 50 Euros each, but we did take a ski lift to another peak on the mountain. We had hoped to find lockers where we could leave our packs and go for a run, but there were none available so we hiked with our packs, breaking into a run every once in a while, and ended up at the bottom after two or three hours.

From there we got on another train going South, and in the evening got into Innsbruck, Austria. We found a nice hotel that was like 600 years old and wasn't too expensive, then got some nice Italian food and a beer and then slept.

The next morning we got up at about 6am to run. We found mention of some running trails in a brochure at the hotel, so we headed in their direction. Innsbruck is right in the Austrian Alps, surrounded on all sides by giant mountains, so our run took us into the hills a bit. The running there ended up being absolutely great...there was a huge system of trails that I could have spent a year exploring, some well-maintained and some offshoots into the forest. We stayed mostly on the nice paths, and took a few roads as well. Finished up feeling not too bad and then had a nice big breakfast at the hotel.