September 2024: What a Summer!

Moinsen, everyone! 👋

How’s it going? I hope you all had a great summer, too. I took a break from writing blog posts and newsletters, not because I needed one, but instead because of my great four daughters – they required my undivided attention while school was out. Now I need a break! 😄

I’m glad to be back writing on this little blog of mine and very grateful for all you subscribers. And as you’re aware, I only publish newsletters when I’ve got something to share. After all these weeks, that’s definitely the case.

📚 Four New Bookshelf Additions!

I didn’t stop reading over the summer, albeit at a slower pace. I’m slightly behind my annual goal of twenty books, but the cozy fall and winter times are still ahead. These four new books I’ve finished since the previous newsletter were rather mixed.

Two of them I can definitely recommend, one was just one good idea spread out over a whole book, and one was superfluous. But you be the judge from what I’ve written down about them!

❤️‍🔥 Running With Jonas Deichmann

In case you haven’t heard about him in the news, Jonas Deichmann has just successfully finished his world record attempt of doing the most long distance triathlons on consecutive days: 120. That’s 3.8km of swimming, 180km of cycling, and a 42.2km marathon run – every single day. It took him between 14 and 16 hours each day and required the utmost precision when it came to fueling and recovery. 

He did it all on the race course of Challenge Roth, a long distance triathlon I’ve done before as well. 

This year, I had the honor of supporting my friend Mathias on his first ever long distance triathlon. He did amazingly well and enjoyed the race to the fullest. And in addition to spending the day taking care of him as much as I could, I used the chance to run the marathon bit of Jonas’ challenge two days before the race. 

🎉 Turning 40 and Celebrating with a Marathon

A big round number for me. I didn’t plan anything special for the day because our daily life was quite exhausting already during these summer holidays, but my amazing wife Sophie somehow pulled it off to invite a bunch of friends who weren’t away on a vacation and showed up for a family-compatible run around our block. The idea was to do the lap 40 times – with a length of about 850m per lap that would be a good long run. 

While about a dozen people actually ran a few laps with me, many more friends just hung out, refilled our cups with drinks on this hot July day, or played with the kids. 

It was the best birthday gift I’ve ever received, honestly. Running is awesome, running with friends even more so. Spending the whole day being active instead of just eating cake after cake or getting drunk was the best possible idea for me personally. I’m very keen on replicating this for my next birthdays! An alternative celebration. Thanks to Sophie. 🥰

🏁 More Marathons!

In August, I ran the nightly Rostock Marathon and was a happy late night finisher in a relaxed time of 3:28:53.

Also in August, the Hartfüssler Trail Saarbrücken, a 58k ultra trail race in the federal state of Saarland brought my collection of German states where I’ve run a (ultra) marathon up to 14 of the 16. Just Sachsen-Anhalt and Brandenburg are left. The Saarbrücken race was beautiful, by the way. Hilly, lots of forrest, lovely folks. 

⏱️ My First Ever Job as a Marathon Pacer

And now, the final highlight. My new blog post. I have finally had the chance to fulfill a longterm dream of mine to be a pacer at a marathon race! With a bit of luck I was allowed to slip into Flensburg Marathon and help runners reach their goal of a marathon finish in 3:45 hours. Because I was always curious about the inner workings of that, I wrote everything down I learned and made it into a blog post for you. 

Take a look here:

That’s it for today’s newsletter. Coming up next time: Running on 1,000 consecutive days – why and how and what?! My streak will reach this milestone on September 26th and I’ve already got a blog post outlined about all the funny and odd things that happened during those two and three quarter years. 

Thank you very much – and all the best to you!
– Teesche