Happy Birthday Tim!!!

July 26.......

In the German culture you host your own birthday party (for adult birthdays). If you don't host the party/reception yourself it is assumed you don't want one.  The adidas tradition is that you bring in your own cake, cookies, muffins, cheese/crackers.  Basically anything that you want.  So Tim wanted to bring in good old chocolate chip cookies, as homemade cookies are not something that you find very often in the local Backerei's (bakery's).

The started off as a normal regular day.  Tim biked to work, with a panier full of wonderful chocolate chip cookies (wonderful, cuz I made them).  And by 1000 hrs they are mostly gone.  A good sign and an interesting too, because German's don't eat sweets for breakfast or in the morning.  A typical German breakfast (Frühstück) falls somewhere between what we would call a deli platter and a continental breakfast. Cold meats (including their famous sausages) and cheeses are served along side a variety of breads and sweet toppings like jam, marmalade and honey. Soft-boiled eggs, cereal and fruit would round out a large breakfast.

I biked out to Tim's office and joined him for lunch, on the adidas 'campus' and brought him a lovely kirsch (cherry) strudel with a candle on it (so cute).

At the end of the work day, Tim hopped on the adidas bus.....

and was driven down to easy-Credit Stadium in Nurnberg to take part (along with 199 other Team adidas runners) in the B2RUN Nurnberg 2012 race.  It is a business 6.2 km run with 15,000 runners, from 550 companies.


easy-Credit Stadium holds 50,000 people!!

 Major sponsor for the event (and other B2RUN's around Germany) is Erdinger - worlds largest wheat beer brewery founded in 1886.  Yes brewery (see more info below).

Erdinger beer can be purchased in Canada,
but I am pretty sure the alcohol free beer can't - too bad!

Start time 1930 hrs (7:30 pm) with a temperature of 32 C

Tim's colleagues - Volker, Sebastian, Sophie and Tim





The Start!
If you look closely, at the bottom left hand corner you will see a group
of people wearing bright orange shirts with 3 (adidas) yellow stripes
on the arms.  In the front row, wearing the baseball cap is Tim!!!



Tim coming into the stadium - the last 100 m!



The Finish Line!



Sophie high fiving Tim at the finish line!

 Interesting enough, the fastest woman in the race was from adidas and the fastest man was from rival Puma!


Tim and Volker.
It looks like they are drinking beer.  They are!
but it is non-alcoholic beer (alkoholfrei bier).
Erdinger, a local brewery sponsors the event all across Germany.
Non-alcoholic beer is seen, in Germany, as a sports drink.
It has no preservatives.....

 German drunk-driving laws are extremely strict and rigidly enforced. The legal limit for blood alcohol is 0.5 parts per million. Penalties for driving while intoxicated are severe. In addition, modern Germans, like most people nowadays, generally try to reduce their caloric intake. For these reasons, virtually every common German beer style is now available in a non-alcohol version as well.  As a result, it has to be good.  And it is.  You wouldn't even know it was alcohol free.  This is the problem in Canada - the alcohol free beers are not good, not good at all.  Maybe one day the Canadian (and American) breweries will wake up and smell the....yeast.

Read this......

Non-Alcoholic Beer
and Your Health

In spite of its its alcohol content of up to 0.5% vol.—an amount which can occur naturally even in fruit juices—non-alcoholic beers have no alcoholic effect on the body. In fact, all carbohydrate-containing food forms small amounts of alcohol in your stomach.

Because of the diluting effect of the relatively high water content of non-alcoholic beers, their concentration of particles (such as minerals and trace elements) corresponds roughly to that of human blood. Therefore, these particles are taken up much faster by the body than is the case with other beverages. This makes non-alcohoilic beers ideal electrolytes and mineral-rich, regenerative beverages especially after strenuous activities such as a work-out or mowing a lawn on a hot day.

Tim and his medal.
(everyone gets a medal, but don't tell him that)



Tim and Bernd.
Bernd is a retired pro basketball player
just completing his MBA and doing
a doing a 3 month coop at adidas.




Tim and Sebastian.



And everyone sang Happy Birthday to Tim.
This will be a birthday not to be forgotten!



The crowd, in the stadium, as we were leaving.

 Happy Birthday Tim!!!!