Day 51- 24 Hour Tae Kwon Do Marathon in Berlin!!!

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Oh wow am I tired! Hopefully I will make sense in this...

About a week ago I joined a Tae Kwon Do school here in Salzburg. I am SO happy to be training again. I have missed it so much and I am glad I finally have time to do it again. This past week of classes also reminded me of how out of shape I have become 😞 I have a lot of work to do before I am back to where I was before but I'm willing to do what I need to do to get there and beyond. Unfortunately I have to miss classes one or two days a week because of my German class.

I had heard that a group of people where going to Berlin this weekend but I didn't really know why they were going. After class on Wednesday (11/4) Master Eberl asked me if I wanted to go with them. There was going to be a 24 hour ( 24 stunden) Tae Kwon Do Marathon. Of course I said yes! Tae Kwon Do all day??? That's like a dream for me! 😊 It was going to be hosted by the Zen Tae Kwon Do School in Berlin. The master of the Berlin school, Thomas Wiener, trained under the same Grand Master as Master Eberl.

Everyone was to meet at the school at 5am Friday morning. The bus that I take to the school (it's about a 30 min. bus ride from where I live) doesn't run that early so Master Eberl found someone to pick me up from the dorm. Thursday ended up being a very busy day since I would be gone all weekend. I didn't get to bed until midnight or 1am and I woke up around 3am or 3:30am on Friday. I don't know how much sleep I actually got in those 2-3 hours because I was worried that I would sleep through my alarm. I was getting picked up from the bus stop by my place so I got there just before 5am. I waited and waited and I was afraid that maybe they forgot to pick me up. That would have been really disappointing! Eventually they showed up at 5:30am. Waiting 30 min. on the side of the street in the dark and cold morning after a shower and no sleep isn't the greatest feeling. Apparently they had been waiting for two boys to show up and I guess they overslept and decided not to come.

We were taking a bus to Berlin but it was leaving from the Ottobrunn school. Ottobrunn is near Munich and it is where Master Eberl opened his first TKD school. He later gave it to two of his top students and he just opened the Salzburg school less than two years ago. It was around a two hour drive to the Ottobrunn school and we left on the bus around 8am. The bus ride to Berlin was about 8 hours I think with two long stops. It was nice sleeping time 😊 We arrived at the Berlin school around 4pm or 5pm. We had time grab something to eat/drink, get our sleeping stuff situated, and change and stretch out before the marathon began at 6pm. The school was very nice. There was a big empty room downstairs that was designated for sleeping. It was really cold and there was condensation on the floor. Not the greatest sleeping quarters but I wasn't planning on spending much time in there anyway. Master Eberl brought an isolation mattress, warm blankets, and a pillow for me to use for sleeping. Upstairs was where the do jang and dressing rooms/showers were. Downstairs was where the kitchen/eating area was, the sleeping room, a lounge area with music playing, ping pong table, and a fusball table.

Ok this is how it worked:

There was a training session every hour on the hour. We were supposed to sign up for hours ahead of time so they would know how many people there would be but that plan quickly went out the window. We each had a card with the hours on it and we had to get it signed after every hour that we trained. With the exception of a few hours, Master Eberl and Master Wiener traded off every hour leading the sessions. I think sometime Saturday morning, maybe around 10am, another master from a school in Cyprus came to teach. Wow were his classes hard!

I had originally thought I would have some sort of strategy for when I would train and when I would sleep but decided to judge it by how I felt. I didn't really want to sleep because I was afraid I would sleep too long. Also, I think I feel worse after sleeping just a little bit than if I just don't sleep at all. I showered to freshen up and put on some dry clothes around midnight (the midnight hour was designated for red belts getting ready to test for black belt) I think and I finally slept for about an hour and half around 10am. I actually felt fine most of the time but I do remember that the clock seemed to move half as fast around the hours of 3am and 4am. I think one of the hardest things was trying to keep warm when I wasn't training. I had to change into a dry shirt and wear my jacket. It was pretty chilly in the building and it was only when I was resting that I would start to feel sore and tired. Resting time was spent eating a snack and hydrating. There were some hours that I wanted to train but there were just too many people that I would have barely been able to do anything. I wanted to get something out of the hour, not just say that I did it. I even ended up leaving half way through one of the hours because there just wasn't any space. I planned on doing the sessions between 2am and 5am because I thought that a lot of people would sleep during that time. The classes were a little bit smaller but not much. But I did notice a big difference when people woke up and got back to training late Saturday morning.

I have to admit it kind of stinks being in the back row now. It's been a while since I was back there. We line up by rank, highest to lowest, right to left. I am wearing a white belt right now since I am just getting back into it. The Salzburg school does some combinations of techniques for each belt that the school in Houston doesn't do. I have to learn all of those and relearn all of the forms and self-defense techniques for each belt. Over the next few months I will work my way up the ranks again by learning and showing my master that I know these techniques.

The training sessions were very challenging for me because of the language. All of the commands were done in German and Korean, but mostly German. Most of the time I just had to hope that there was a demonstration and I had to watch the other people around me to see what I was supposed to do. It especially got difficult when we did fast combinations because it would take me a while to be able to process and translate what the master said. And of course I was in the back corner and couldn't see the front row to know what I was doing (using rows other than the first row as a model isn't always such a great idea because most of the time the other rows don't know what's going on either haha). I still think I did pretty well considering the situation and it got a little easier as the hours went on and I began to understand more.

There was an option to go on the bus for a sightseeing tour on Saturday morning but I think only a handful of people went. I wasn't too concerned about seeing the city this time since I will be making another trip to Berlin next week. I didn't want to miss too much training time. Overall, I think the time passed very quickly. Before I knew it, it was already 12noon on Saturday.

Everyone was to participate in the last hour (5pm Sat.). It was pretty crazy. I think there were around 120 people total. We were all in the do jang at the same time doing routines. There wasn't much kicking going on in that hour, obviously, but I still don't know how we did it. When 6pm came, we were done training and it was award time. The masters presented each with gifts and we received medals. Bronze, silver, and gold medals were awarded. I received a gold medal for a total of 12 hours of training. I actually did 14.5 but the first and last hours were not counted for anyone and the half hour didn't count either. Trophies were also given out for the most hours trained by an individual and by a family. Two guys actually trained all 24 hours!!!!!! Can you believe it?!?!?! They are black belts so that means 24 hours in the first row! I don't know how they did it. The black belts definitely had to do more work than everyone else (good thing I wasn't wearing a black belt😊. They have to be the models for everyone and most times they had to do extra exercises that were more difficult. These two guys were also the ones that were chosen to do most of the demonstrations. The only breaks they got were the 30 seconds or so between the start and end of each session. That's when they would grab a sip of water and a bite of a banana or something. I guess they probably had to take the occasional bathroom break but still, that's insane! I could see them start to wane a bit towards the end but they were determined.

My training hours:
Friday:
6pm-train
7pm-train
8pm train for half an hour (too many people)
9pm-train
10pm-rest
11pm-train
12am-shower/watch red belts

Saturday:
1am-rest
2am-train
3am-train
4am-train
5am-rest
6am-train
7am-train
8am-rest
9am-train
10am-sleep
11am-sleep a bit more, eat
12pm-change, stretch out for next class
1pm-train
2pm-train
3pm-train
4pm-train
5pm-train
6pm-awards

After the awards were done everyone showered and went downstairs to eat and relax at the party. We were all so tired! I don't think anyone had a problem sleeping Saturday night. I wanted to beat the crowd at the showers so a few of us woke up around 8:30am on Sunday and everyone else slowly got going after 9am. I was sore but not nearly as sore as I thought I would be. Maybe I should have trained more...We ate breakfast at the school and left Berlin around 10am. The bus driver pointed out some sites on our way out of town but of course he was speaking German. I'll just wait until next week. This weekend was also the celebration of the Berlin Wall so a lot of the city was shut down for the events. That would have been fun to see.

The bus ride home was a very quiet one 😊 We made a couple stops along the way for food and made it back to Ottobrunn around 7pm. We still had to drive back to Salzburg so I got home around 9:30pm. This weekend was an incredible experience. I never imagined I would participate in such an event. The atmosphere is so incredible and I think it's something really special. It's something I can't really explain. The school is a big family and everyone is so friendly and supportive of one another. Also, everyone was so kind to me. Master Eberl had told everyone that he had a student coming who was from America and had just joined his school last week. He also mentioned my previous TKD training in Texas. Everyone was so eager to talk to me and they all thought that I was so brave for being in Salzburg by myself and learning the language and coming on this trip after just one week. I helped them with their English and they helped me with German. I am known as "The American" haha. It's also great that Master Eberl is so helpful and motivating and he's good at pushing your limits. We have an agreement that we will help each other with each other's language but of course he teases me about learning German haha. And he's always yelling at me to smile!

This was a very satisfying experience and I hope to participate in events with the school in the future. A lot of the TKD schools around Austria and Germany come together for training sessions around Europe. I hope to participate in the week long sessions in Tirol and Greece next summer. Ah I can't say it enough! I'm so glad to be back!!! Back to the do jang tomorrow!

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Photos

Gong
marked the beginning of each session