It's a very old question, no doubt about it. One of those questions that always splits athletes into two camps – the stoics and the epicures. What I mean is, on the one hand, you have the ones for whom the pleasure of a run lies in bearing the pain, and on the other, there are runners like me, spurned on only by the prospect of Antonia's cream cake.

And talking about finishing the race. I crawled out to the starting line of the AirportRun today and took a look at the route for the run on Sunday. The fantastic thing is that the 3rd AirportRun also happens to be a tour of the construction site. The half-marathon starts at 9 o'clock at the Infotower, which is right at the heart of all the building activities, then it continues across the site of the future Capital City Airport, BBI, along a lovely old avenue to Rotberg and then on to Tollkrug and Glasow (where the 10-kilometre run begins – also at 9) and finally on to Selchow and then back to Schoenefeld Airport.

Anyone taking part in the AirportRun will follow the progress of construction step by step, so to speak. Three quarters of the route is on newly made roads, the rest on beautiful Brandenburg avenues. There will be refreshment and first-aid stands along the route to give the weary runners a boost for the rest of the race.

But there's one thing I know now and that is that my biggest boost will be thinking about the well-earned cream cake Antonia has promised me for afterwards. A half-marathon to cream cake! A good 21 kilometres for coffee and cake – I can hardly wait!!

print version berlin-airport.de (Copyright Berliner Flughäfen)