yes, we have been to schoenbrunn again, but this time, it was all a little different. we got there for the fourth viennese zoo run. the entry number was limited to 1500 and nina and me got lucky we got our starting numbers, because it was already sold out and we ended up on the waiting list. in april we got an email that we can run as two people had canceled their registration - happy us. there were four starting blocks, each of them had an animal assigned to it. we were in the royal angelfish block (and sadly not in the tiger block), which was to start as the second one. the remaining two blocks were zebra and elephant. we ran pretty slow and relaxed, taking our time to peek at all the confused animals, which might have been wondering what was going on at this time of the day, when the zoo is usually already closed and there should not be any people around anymore, and what all the people are running from - must be a pretty scary predator. so we saw lions, tigers, cheetahs, the cute fluffy newborn wolf cubs (we had not seen them yet), elephants, flamingos, zebras, polar bears and many more. a lot of contestants had painted their faces and body parts to resemble an animal of their choice (mostly tigers from the tiger block, which made it easy with the make up). some also had hats on, that looked like fish, and the runner with number 1 had a giraffe costume on, as the run was to raise money for the new giraffe enclosure and also to help children suffering from pulmonary hypertension. the route was six kilometres long and for the most parts it was flat, only a short passage was uphill and then downhill again. along the run stood loads of helpers that cheered us on and help keeping the motivation up. visitors were not allowed in the zoo during the competition, but there was a short section of the route where we had to run outside the zoo, and there were some people cheering too. of course nina and i crossed the finish line holding hands, and we did fairly bad when it comes to our ranking (let's just say we were not the slowest ones). but since we enjoyed the atmosphere and the animals, and, on top of that, nina had a little cold and a stuffy nose, it is perfectly okay. unfortunately this also meant that we did not get a price, which would have been a cute and fluffy plush giraffe, which really would have been pretty nice to have. in the finish area every contestant got drinks and food; nina had a chilli, i had an kaiserschmarrn; since we were in the "kaiserfisch"-block, this was the only appropriate choice. that was really fun, and the both of us are already looking forward to next year's run - hopefully we make it into the tiger block this time...