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

The beginning of a new year always gives me a good feeling of renewal, even though it’s a completely arbitrary point in time. Since I’ve created this habit of yearly reviews and plans in 2016, it’s been fun and interesting to me to set these challenges for myself and try to complete them. In general I was quite successful, but I’ve always learned a few things from the failures, too. That’s why I don’t think I’ll stop this habit now. 

For reference reasons, here are the last few year’s posts I’ve published about yearly goals.

Read on

That’s it, the year’s over! The final month during which I hold myself publicly accountable for the goals I set for 2019 is in the past. Time to take a deep breath.

Read on

There’s a person on this planet who has completed more marathons in his lifetime than everyone else. His name is Christian Hottas and he is from Hamburg.

What’s your guess, how many marathons do you have to run to be number one in the world? 500, maybe a thousand? In the World Megamarathon Ranking of June 2019, Christian Hottas was listed as number one with an insane 2,785 completed marathons. Imagine that. How many marathons per year for how many years? And by the way, when does a marathon count as a marathon? 

I would find answers to these questions today from number 125 in the world, according to the list. 

Read on

Read on

Looking through the list of marathon races during Germany’s colder months you won’t find much. But a few races you can always count on are the ones organized by members of the notorious German 100 Marathon Club. 

After all, they somehow all made it to 100+ marathons by running marathons. If there aren’t any, you’ll have to make them yourself. 

This man has not only exceeded the 100 marathons in his lifetime, but even 1,000.

1,618 is his current and probably final marathon count as he has given up the running at age 78, which was a few years ago. Now, he still makes marathons happen for others. That’s someone to look up to. 

Read on

To be honest, I just signed up for this race because I thought the name of it is just great.

Also, getting through the cold winter months of northern Germany comes a lot easier to me when I have a bunch of long distance races to look forward to. 

After having reached basically all the goals I’ve set for 2019, this counts as bonus. Frankfurt marathon two weeks ago went well enough to make me feel successful, so I was looking forward to having a race after that training phase. Now I can just run as I feel like, with no imposed restrictions because of the training plan.

Read on

I have done 59 full marathon or ultramarathon races so far. Not for a single one of them have I ever properly trained. Until now. 

You might have read one of my recent posts about my first ever coordinated training effort, following the Peter Greif method, “Countdown: 8 Weeks to Your Personal Best”. The bug had bitten me, I finally wanted to be faster in a marathon. My previous personal best, which happened by accident, was a solid 3:26 hours at Hamburg Marathon 2017. The goal I chose and thought to be realistic for this try, is 3:15 hours.

Read on

Review the original post, January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, and September here.

Read on

I’ve been running marathons for about 10 years now but I have never before followed a plan or had a coach. Of course I talked to many experienced people and asked their advice or simply inquired about their own methods, but for myself I’ve always preferred just basic, unplanned running without any external measures. 

I made it quite far with this non-technique – to a 3:26 hour marathon and 1:34 hour half marathon. Just by training at the natural speed my body allowed me to go at, never over-exhausting myself. Recreational running, as it’s called. At some point, though, that turned out to not be enough for me anymore.

It has become time for an experiment. Training.

Read on

This was a fun one!

I can’t remember how I found out about the race, but apparently the Heidelberg Trail Marathon is quite a well-known and loved race in Germany. That might be due to the popularity the city enjoys among international tourists, mainly Americans and Eastern Asians, but probably also due to the tough nature of the race. At 1,500 meters of elevation gain it’s no joke. 

For 2019, the team had come up with an additional event in order to make it even harder. 50 kilometers instead of 42.195, and 2,000 meters of elevation gain total. When I saw that, I signed up.

Read on