Huge New Blog Post: New York City Marathon 2023

Moinsen, everyone! 👋

Here we are. A lot has happened and the year is drawing to a close. My final big highlight of the year was New York City Marathon on November 5th – a race I have been looking forward to since I first entered the lottery drawing some seven or eight years ago.

And what can I say: This race is amazing and worth the long wait! But before I give you the big pink button to read my in-depth post for yourself, here are a few other things which happened during the past few weeks. 

1. 🪣 Running NYC Marathon has been on my bucket list at teesche.com/future for a while, as many of the items on it tend to be. I set big goals usually. Now it has moved down into the “bucket list items achieved” list, which was a great feeling, too.
2. 🩸 I’ve long had another item on that list which is donating blood for the first time in my life. I was slightly scared of it and worried about how losing half a liter of blood might affect my training and fitness, but now, after NYC is done and the marathons of the year are over, it fit well into the calendar, so I overcame my fears and just did it. Another bucket list item crossed off! Worth mentioning: It wasn’t as bad as I thought and my fitness was back after a day. I’ve already made an appointment for next time! 
3. 🏃 As well as New York City, I have also run a few other races since the last time I’ve sent out a newsletter. Those were Salzkammergut Marathon in St. Wolfgang, Austria, where I finished in 3:41h – there’s a massive hill right in the middle! Then, Venice Marathon in Italy with a magnificent finish line near Piazza San Marco, a week later in 3:31h, and a week after NYC I did the tiny Sülldorfer Feldmark Marathon, which I won in 3:24:30 (just 50 participants). This was an end of the year marathon effort I am quite proud of, but which brings my 2023 total to 17, still 7 short of my goal of doing 24 runs of that distance. I’m aiming to do three more self-timed ones to get to 20, but 24 has become too unrealistic now. More on that in my yearly review post, coming towards the end of December.
4. 📚 Speaking of the annual goals, while the 24 marathons didn’t quite work out, I have recently finished my 24th book of the year, successfully completing that goal! It’s been great and I’m currently reading book 25. Learned a lot, had great times with very interesting books, regret nothing. I owe two more book reviews so everything is up to date on the website, but those are coming soon.
5. 🚭 A couple of weeks ago, I achieved my 8th anniversary of successfully quitting smoking. It’s still one of the best decisions I’ve made in life to just stop. Until recently I had this little app on my phone which shows me how long it’s been, how much money I’ve already saved, and how my body is recovering from it. That app got removed from the App Store, though. So I built the same thing as a little website to keep track. Here it is: teesche.com/quitsmoking – take a look at how rich I’ve theoretically become! 😄

Coming up next, I will write those mentioned two book reviews (The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter and Range by David Epstein) and I will publish a short blog post about what it’s like to donate blood, in the hopes of clearing up some prejudice and motivating a few of you to possibly also give a bit of yours to people in need. 

Also, my racing calendar for 2024 is filling up nicely. The three big highlights will be 

1. Going for Sub-3 at Hamburg Marathon on April 28th along with four running buddies
2. Finishing Zugspitz Ultratrail 106k on June 14th as a Western States qualifier
3. Running Chicago Marathon on October 13th, getting star 5 out of 6 of the World Marathon Majors

And now, without further ado, here’s the big and brand new New York City Marathon blog post, containing lots of pictures and videos, and even a Giveaway! So keep your eyes open, you can actually win something. 😲