November 2024: Off-Season, New Goals, Chicago Marathon Blog Post

Moinsen, everyone! 👋

First off, welcome to all you new subscribers! Over the course of September and October, the number of you has nearly doubled. I don’t know what specifically caused it, but I’m happy you’re here and hope my writing speaks to you.

November is here, it’s getting colder, which for many runners like me means it’s “off-season”. Not only is my last main highlight of this year, Chicago Marathon, behind us, but also my last marathon race of the year is now done. I went to the small city of Magdeburg in eastern Germany and finished a fun race in 3:27 hours in wonderful fall weather. That’s 20 full marathon runs in 2024, checking off that goal I set back in January.

🎯 Old Goals Done, New Goals Incoming!

Now is the time to cool down and do some easy running. While I like to have a short breather of a few weeks after a big season, I’m always thinking about new ideas and goals during that period. My next big one will take place on March 9 of 2025 in the village of Kandel, where I will return to run Bienwald Marathon – the race which helped me finally break 3:00 hours.

This time I’m aiming for the moon, but not literally. I would like to qualify for Boston again. It was so cool over there. But it got harder. A mere Sub-3 marathon won’t be enough anymore for a person in my age group.

For next March, I am planning to go for a 2:49 hour finish, shaving nine minutes off. That’s a 4:00 min/km average pace. Writing this down still feels crazy, but I know from experience that setting big goals which seem audacious is the first step to achieving them. For this race I’ve got a new personal coach, and it’s Martin Grüning, Runner’s World Germany editor-in-chief and former pro with a personal best of 2:13 hours. He knows a thing or two. I’m sure he will be able to help me.

It’s fair to say I can’t wait to get going! These winter months are always perfect for building up fitness without the “distraction” of races happening left and right. 

🇪🇺 Brussels Surprise

Last weekend, I took two of my daughters to see our European capital for the first time. I don’t think I’ve been here since finishing my 28 EU country capital city marathons challenge in 2018. It’s been cold but we did everything we set out to, including a visit to the parliament. Politics are weird currently, but I feel like even if some countries are going through a rough patch, the EU has a stabilizing effect on them all.

The funny thing was that on Sunday when we left, the Brussels Marathon took place! I didn’t know and wasn’t running, but I had strong flashbacks to that wonderful project I did from 2011 to 2018 with the growing family.

📚 How to Run the EU & Pragmatic Nihilism

I’ve added two recently completed books to my bookshelf. The first one I picked up at the gift shop of the EU museum in Brussels, and it was a quick and involuntarily fun read about how work at the parliament looks like in practice. 

Its information density is high and there’s no time wasted. I liked that. Here are my thoughts about the book:

The other one I selected is an oddball book. The philosophic idea of “nihilism” has a bad reputation. It’s often used as an insult. I wanted to know more about that, especially if it’s really all there is to it. I learned that it’s not the opposite of existentialism, as many believe, but rather the foundation of it. Many well-known philosophers like Nietzsche arrived at their existentialist ideas by starting with exploring nihilism. There’s something soothing to it, too. But see for yourself if that’s also true for you. 

🇺🇸 The Big Blog Post: Chicago Marathon 2024

I send out these newsletters around once every month, because I want to have a big new blog post ready for you. And these take time, at least the way I write. For Chicago, I wanted to put some more thoughts down which surrounded the race weekend, my trip there, and also the situation I found the US to currently be in. The marathon race itself played the biggest part, of course. To spoil that surprise for you, it’s been amazing 😉.

And here wo go, get ready for 8,500 words or a podcast episode that’s almost one hour long! I hope you’ll enjoy it. 

All the best to you,
– Teesche