Hello, my name is Tim Teege
and this is my blog.

I have four daughters. They are lovely and require lots of attention. No surprise here. Although I try to be a very involved father and probably spend more time with them than most fathers because of my unusual work schedule, I don’t feel qualified to throw around parenting advice like nothing. 

Except in one area. Traveling. 

We, as a family, go on holidays quite a lot. There were my 28 EU capital marathons during the last seven years, there is our family connection in South Africa and there’s our strong bond to the country of New Zealand and a few certain special people down there.

Unfortunately, these travels still create a CO2 footprint for us comparable to a whole street of people. We need to build a small forrest to offset it, probably. Or invest in some renewable technology airplanes. That would be nice. 

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I first heard about this event while on a bike trip through the Northland region of New Zealand three years ago. Suddenly, an advertisement sign at the side of the road caught my eye. 90 Mile Beach Ultramarathon, that sounds interesting! A bit long, but interesting none the less. 90 miles is about 145 kilometers.

Fortunately, the European settlers who arrived in New Zealand, conquered the islands, and named everything as they pleased, weren’t able to accurately measure a perfectly straight long beach’s length. In fact, it’s about 88 kilometers (55 miles) long.

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In my ongoing conquest to make the most out of this time here in New Zealand – as well as in life in general, really – here’s a story about the first ever Wharf 2 Wharf Marathon on the island of Waiheke, just off the coast of Auckland.

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When you look at the New Plymouth region from above, you don’t have to be a geologist to understand how it came into existence. 

This bump in New Zealand’s North Island is located half-way between Auckland, the country’s biggest city, and Wellington, the country’s capital. The mountain responsible for us being able to run a marathon in that area is called Taranaki, or Egmont, if you’re a British colonialist. There’s a movement to rename landmarks in their traditional way, which is before the European settlers arrived and felt the urge to name everything as they preferred. 

I got interested in this marathon race, because not only did it fit our schedules very well, it’s also advertised as a relatively easy run, going slightly downhill most of the time. Mountain 2 Surf. 

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This is the second follow-up about how my yearly goals are going. See original post for more info on them and the January post.

1. One (ultra) marathon race done!

✅ On February 9th, I successfully finished the Tarawera Ultramarathon 50k near the New Zealand city of Rotorua. It went really well and I enjoyed it heaps. This gets me closer to my 12 marathons goal, but as February is now in the past as well, I’m still one marathon short of the needed average. Not for long, though.

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Whenever I can, I use a chance to run an interesting race while I’m in a different country. Right now, we’re in Auckland, New Zealand, for a few months, so I naturally have a few events planned. The first one is now history.

Tarawera

It’s a lake in the vicinity of the city of Rotorua, which is known for its rather unusual geothermal activities. There’s a volcano in the area which is probably part of the reason it smells like sulfur everywhere and steam is coming out of the earth at random places throughout the town.

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One month down, eleven to go.

This is a short status update on how I’m doing with my yearly goals, see this post for more info on them.

1. Zero marathon races

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The spoiler comes right at the beginning. In 2018 I succeeded at all but one of my yearly and monthly goals, and for 2019 I’ll keep nearly the same list. Here is the new one.

• 12 Marathons
• 2,000 Kilometers of Running in Total
• Run Every 2 Days (at least 5 km)
• 5 Million Steps
• Read 12 Books

Now I can elaborate. For two consecutive years now, I have published my yearly goals and how I did on them on my marathon blog, teesches-marathons.eu. It’s a motivational boost for myself to do so.

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First off, to absolutely no one’s surprise, you’ll lose weight. 

So, if that’s your goal, you have the recipe right here.

My goal wasn’t to lose weight, much rather it was about finding out what will happen to my body in general. Losing weight is one outcome. But what else happened? And what is it like every day? What’s the unforeseen challenges? Here’s my experience.

A Third Attempt

Yes, I have tried and failed this month-long project twice before. The vegan month, that is. In 2017 I set the challenge for March and got too frustrated and lazy after just three days, if I remember correctly. I started another attempt in June of 2017 and made it to the 15th, half-way through, having learned a few minor things that helped. I also realized that tiny mistakes are not avoidable. 

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For the first time in my life I missed a connecting flight and was stranded over night in a different city. 

Of course my first reaction was to turn to Google for answers what to do about this, but I couldn’t find any helpful stories about what would happen. So here’s my story, maybe someone will find this helpful.

Italian Weekend

I spent the weekend of December 15 and 16 in Pisa, Italy, to run their marathon. Lufthansa flew me from Hamburg (HAM) to Frankfurt (FRA), I changed planes to get to Florence (FLR). The second legs’ operating airline was Air Dolomiti, a tiny company using just 12 planes. They are owned by Lufthansa and fly under their label. Tiny delays, no problem. Rental car over to Pisa, 80 kilometers.

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