We all love going the extra mile, right? But what about two of them? And what when it is about a fairly hilly marathon through slippery mud? Well, I am going ahead of myself. The Steyning Stinger is a trail marathon in the area of Brighton, where I had heard rather bewildering stories about bad weather, gales, and challenging terrain. A friend of mine was running it and I was desperate getting back into the marathon game, so I gave…
Finishing the Madeira Marathon is about something else than just having done another one. In plain numbers, it’s my 62nd marathon, which I completed by struggling along with an under average time of 4:08 hours. What makes it special is, that all signs had been pointing towards me not completing any marathon any time soon. Over the last three months of 2019, I had experienced the worst running slump since I started running 14 years ago. I simply did not…
Doing Reykjavik pushed my marathon count up to 60. Yet, I can’t remember the last time I got that nervous and felt so underprepared. My running summer had not been great. There were too many weekends where I just had shortened or skipped the long run. Not running had almost become a new habit. Four weeks before ReykjavÃk I tried to reverse the trend and came up with an emergency plan for the 3 remaining weekends. Long runs that increase…
You have to love Tokyo. Are there possibly more friendly, helpful and nice people anywhere on the planet? I doubt it. And if these people organise one of the six biggest marathons in the world it has to be awesome, right? With 330,000 registrations, the chosen 38,000 runners who had the privilege to attend this year probably thought the same. But Tokyo oh Tokyo what is wrong with your weather? I had never run a marathon in constant rain before,…
Flashback to the same time last year: I had almost stopped being a runner over this Country to Capital 45 miles race, having experienced a rare case of running depression during the 30k (19mi) final stretch along the Grand Union Canal. The bits that are run-down, littered and dystopian looking had enforced my dark and sinister thoughts about running and life. Well, I had finished somehow but was left with the feeling that there are demons to face. I normally…
What a name for a running event, uh? “Timelord on the Thames.” And if you think the name is epic, you should see the medal. Rumor has it that there are non-runners Dr. Who fans, who torture their way through the minimum of one lap just to get this medal. One lap is an eighth of a marathon, a bit over 5k. Initially I did not realise that the doors of the blue phone box can be opened and you…
In November 2012, on my way to get the registration pack for the Athens marathon, I bumped into a group of other runners from the UK sharing the excitement about Athens and mentioning the Snowdonia Marathon in Wales they had done the week before and how great it was. That left me with the following thoughts: What freaks, how can you run marathons on two consecutive weekends? And: I want to do the Snowdonia one next year! Well, it took…
Not long ago, it was the first time in my running career that I ran across a country border, passing guards and everything. Of course I had no passport on me, so it felt weird just to jog pass the border control from Switzerland to Italy, wondering about it being one thing to get out of Switzerland and another to get back in. But my leap of faith got rewarded with no issues (thank you Mr Schengen) and one running…
The build-up to the Braintree marathon had not been easy. It did not help that at no point I felt overly excited about it. The prospect of running one hundred five and a half 400m rounds was not particularly my idea of marathon fun. So I had prepared to get mentally ready and even youtubed about it. When I had felt as ready as ever, the event had been postponed. The infamous Beast From The East had swept through the…
Helsinki is a cool place. Not literally cool – well, that too, but at least not on this marathon weekend. We had 20 degrees Celsius, which for me is far too hot to do a good time. The more surprising it was, that I actually did do a pretty solid time: 3:31:35. Which puts this run into the top 20% of my fastest marathons. Since I recently became an associated member of the 100 Marathons Club, I know this whole number stuff.…
Last Sunday’s long-run almost did not happen. The winter-is-back-blues almost took its toll. In the end, I decided to go out anyway and see how far it would go. And maybe discovered a secret runner’s blues weapon on the way: a DIY energy drink. Just recently I started experimenting mixing sugar into water, add a bit of salt and call that “fueling”. I got the idea from an article, where science suggests that normal household sugar is better for endurance…
Where the heck is Erith? (Or even “what is it”, for that matter.) The Braintree Track Marathon got cancelled (or postponed), so I had to come up with ideas what to do on a suddenly freed-up Sunday morning. I decided to be adventurous and run new terrain as recommended in the Runner’s Guide To London. Here is the story of how I ended up in an English town that I had never heard of before, neither knew how to pronounce it.…
This week I had to show up at the German Embassy to get a new ID card (one of those obscurities the British are happily doing without). While this whole process is quite a palaver (infamous German bureaucracy), the Embassy is nicely located at Belgrave Square, not far from Hyde Park. It was a good opportunity to take my running kit with me and run home via parks and places I had not been before. Like Primrose Hill and its…
The beast from the east is upon us Londoner! This is how the media call the weather that transformed London into a snowed-in Winter Wonderland. For runners with grippy trail shoes, it’s the ideal playground. I went out today and got some running footage with my still newish GoPro Hero6. I love running in the snow. It’s so soft, so quiet, so peaceful. Usually, only the announcement of a snowflake brings the UK to a standstill. No surprise that they…
I solved a first world problem! Well, with the comment “first world problem” my friend Michael responded to my desperate previous post about trying to prepare adequately for a potential mind-numbing tack marathon in Braintree next week. First world problem – that, as a good German, made me think, and reflexes of Weltschmerz, self-doubt and saving-the-world-urges kicked in. Hahaha. But hey, at least that one problem got solved! First world or not. Yesterday I took the bull by the horns and completed my…
