Tuscany Crossing 103K: A Trail Tale of Rolling Hills, Cypress Trees, and a Splash of Olive Oil The Tuscany Crossing is an ultra trail event with several distance options, including a 53 km, a 103 km, and a 100 mile (160 km) race. It is…
The Next Level: Marathon Training with Coach and Former Pro Martin Grüning About a year ago, I broke the magical three hour barrier in the marathon run. It did not come easy to me, I had to work for it over quite a…
How My 2024 Went and What I’ve Got Planned for 2025 My favorite post of the year! After reviewing what I’ve written a year ago, I am actually surprised at how different everything has been t…
How I Quit Smoking One of the stupidest things I ever did in my life, and there’s no shortage of those, was smoking cigarettes. Too many of them, over way to…
Why I Want to Run a Marathon on the Moon The first profession I remember I wanted to pursue as a kid was that of what I called an inventor. Building new and useful things for others…
Chicago Marathon: The Odd One Out of the Three World Majors in the United States? Chicago Marathon is my number five of the six World Marathon Majors. After having been lucky enough to qualify for Boston and run it in 2023…
Project System Elephant: A New Way to Look at Work About one year has passed since I’ve sold the remaining stakes of ownership in my companies and exited as CEO. From that point on, I no lo…
Running on Every Single Day for 1,000 Consecutive Days – Is Streak Running Stupid or Awesome? I have just completed a 1,000 day running streak. That means that I have, without a single exception, gone for a run for that amount of cons…
What’s It like to Be an Official Pacer at a Marathon Race? The vast majority of public race events build upon the help of unpaid volunteers. This had been obvious to me since the first running races…
Zugspitz Ultra Trail 2024: Overcoming Discomfort with Gratefulness and Tomato Paste The annual ultra trail race that has been part of my plans for a few times now finally happened. I was looking forward to this for months wi…
4th Munich Breweries Ultra – 80 Kilometers With Seven Beer Stops in Pouring Rain Time for a stupidly fun ultramarathon! Since my buddy Nicolas Palme and I initiated the race back during the pandemic in 2021, our reach and…
Hamburg Marathon: Celebrating a Sub-3 Race on Home Turf Every time I run this race in my home city it gets better. Hamburg Marathon was my first marathon race ever. In 2010 I reached the finish l…
How to Build a Tiny Software as a Service (SaaS) with Very Few Skills Nobody has to build the next Facebook or TikTok. Are you familiar with Kevin Kelly’s essay “1,000 True Fans”? The former editor of W…
My Optimized Sub-3 Hour Marathon Training Routine, Including the Proof it Works: 2:58:44 at Bienwald Marathon Over the past four years, I’ve written a few times about my ongoing quest to beat the magical three hours barrier in a marathon race. This…
24 Hours Without Food: My Eye-Opening Journey into Water-Only Fasting For about a decade now, I’ve had an item on my bucket list which doesn’t require much effort. Trying water-only fasting. In February of …
How to Juggle with Three Balls Have you ever come across or even said one or both of these two quotes? It’s a marathon, not a sprint! and I’m juggling so many…
100 Miles in a Day: BremenSanktPauli 100, the Story of Creating a Race from City to City In May of 2023, some friends and I pulled off another stunt. As in 99% percent of the cases, fellow runner Michael Mankus had the idea take …
What I Have Planned for 2024 (And a Recap of 2023) Another year has come to a close and so here I am to take stock of all that happened, think about it, and form new goals for the future. If …
My Morning Routine in 2023 My circadian rhythm is that of a night owl. Fresh and attentive in the late evenings, super tired in the mornings. I used to feel bad about…
Testing the CORE Body Temperature Monitor: Unlock Your Heat Training Potential and Optimize Performance Over the last few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to test the CORE Body Temperature Monitor. This is a device which is strapped around the…
What’s It Like to Donate Blood? I think it’s fair to say everyone’s aware that giving blood is something any healthy human should probably do from time to time. Until w…
New York City Marathon 2023: The Marathon of Marathons in the City of Cities 🏆 Which Is the Best Marathon Race in the World? At the time of writing, I’m at 83 marathon races in 30 different countries. Sometimes…
Erfurt & Kassel’s Double Marathon Weekend: A Runner's Perspective At the beginning of 2023, I’ve set the goal to read 24 books and run 24 marathons during these twelve months. As you can see on my progres…
The Best Beginner’s GPS Sports Watch: COROS PACE 3 Review Before the relatively new sports brand COROS caught my attention, I’ve had Garmin and Polar watches for years. Those were just fine, altho…
2nd Place at a Hilly Half Marathon: Blankeneser Heldenlauf DERBE Edition I’ve done this great race a few times before. It’s just a short bike ride to the west from my home which means I know the area and the c…
Lavaredo Ultra Trail 120K Race Report: As Beautiful As It Is Difficult I’m going into Round #2 of my dream to some day run the Western States 100 Endurance Run. Being awarded one of those coveted 250 slots for…
The Case for Optimism: Taking Inspiration From John Linegar, MrBeast, and Nardwuar For the Future of Humankind I consider myself an optimist. Not just about how my personal life will turn out, but for humankind itself. Over the last few decades I’v…
Personal Running Coach: Is it Worth Starting Your Running Training with One? Have you been thinking about taking your running abilities to the next level? Maybe you’ve already tried a few training plans before, mayb…
What’s It like to Run the Boston Marathon? Boston Marathon Race Report The Runner’s Race. For the majority of people, entering this race takes serious commitment and an effort oft…
What I Have Planned For 2023 (Including a Fall of 2022 Recap) 🧑🎓 The Season of Learning Getting right into it, the upcoming winter season will be under the umbrella of learning for me. In the…
Questioning Everything at Templiers 104k Endurance Trail Festival What am I doing here? Why am I doing this? What makes an activity worthwhile? It can be plain fun, I can be an interesting challenge with w…
Summer 2022, Reflection → Courage, Recap and Outlook My favorite season of the year is history, the colder days are fast approaching. What a summer it’s been! Not only have us Hamburgers been…
Going into Round Two: Cologne Marathon Sub-3 At some point between the start and end of the 2020s, I would like to run a marathon in less than three hours. It’s the next magic barrier…
New York City: Manhattan Perimeter Ultramarathon New York City. Arguably the greatest city in the world, the center, maybe even the capital of Earth, if there was one. This is the story ab…
Fastest Known Time for Peter Huggett on Fehmarnumrundung The island of Fehmarn is Germany’s third largest one with an area of 185 km². It’s known for having a sunny sub-climate and therefore i…
Spring is Over, Summer is Here: Season Recap and Outlook Half the year is over! Or, in my way of measuring time these days, two quarters of the year are over! 91 days lay between April 1st and Jun…
Quantified Teesche – An Expedition into the World of Tracking a Life In order to improve anything, you first have to take measure of it. I’ve long been interested in measuring parts of my life in order to g…
For the Record: Training for and Trying a Sub-3 Hour Marathon The story of the moving goalpost. You should know when to say “enough is enough” and be content with what you have achieved. On the othe…
Grüner Ring 200: Organizing and Supporting a 200 Kilometer Running Race There and Back Again. As with many races in the COVID era, it’s been a while between coming up with the idea and the race actually taking…
🌈 New Quarter, Theme, Goals, Intents! (Spring 2022) After these first 90 days of 2022 it’s time for a short review and an outlook into the future. First off, the new rhythm of quarterly mome…
Educational Project: How to Become a Better Manager 📹 Video vs. 🎙 Podcast vs. ✍️ Writing Ever since I’ve read the brilliant book The Making of a Manager by Julie Zhou, I felt th…
New Book Out – The Story of my EU Marathon Runs You can now buy an eBook written by me and it’s called "Running in the EU". As the title says, this is a compendium of the blog posts…
My Intentions for 2022 💡 Living with Intent It’s time to look ahead. A few days ago, I posted my personal review of 2021 and received lots of positive feedb…
Review of 2021 One of my favorite parts of the end of the year is taking some time to reflect on how it’s been going. What went well, what not so much, w…
Mozart 100 – Going Ultra in Salzburg These days it doesn’t happen often that a race I’m doing breaks not just one but several personal records. I think that’s great, becau…
1st Munich Great Breweries Ultra Finally I have something running related to write about! One and a half years into this pandemic, most interesting races are still being can…
Halftime: How 2021 is Going Making plans is one thing, following through with them another. Now, after the mid point of 2021, it seems like a good time to pause and ref…
My Work Setup: Hardware and Software I use in 2021 Inspired by Stefan Zweifel, Dave Rupert, and Ali Abdaal, all of whom productivity favorites of mine, this post is to showcase the hardware, …
Goals for 2021 Finally a new year for new plans! Yes, I know that it’s still an arbitrary point in time, but who cares. I like making these plans. After …
Goals 2020: How Did I Do? 2020 is over, time for a review! For five years in a row, I have now written down what I had been up to at the end of each year (Review 2…
Coast 2 Coast Ultra: Running from the North Sea (Husum) to the Baltic Sea (Eckernförde) Time for another self-organized ultra run! Still, there are no races in sight, and for obvious reasons it wouldn’t be the smartest move…
Small November Ultra: Holsteinische Schweiz Weg The ongoing pandemic keeps making us find new routes to run. A few weeks earlier, in an edition of the newsletter from the FastestKnownTime.…
#comeon1more – Incremental Running Streak Month Powered by hot baths, cold showers, horse ointment, and Chartreuse. Since this COVID-19 pandemic is still going on, I’ve also still been …
Tiny House Follow-Up: Improvements During the summer of 2018, which is about two years ago now, I built a little structure in our garden which could be classified somewhere be…
A Picture in a Thousand Words Explanation: This post is inspired by a challenge created by Tim Hein and Brady Haran in an episode of their Unmade podcast. The task is to …
Yearly Goals: Half Time Status At the start of the previous four years, I have set personal goals to reach during those years. For 2020 as well. This particularly weird ye…
100 Kilometer Run: Hamburg to the Baltic Sea There are a few standard distances many endurance runners have on their mind. 21.1k half marathon 42.2k full marathon 50k 50 miles (80…
Jenischpark Laps: Double Marathon Weekend Currently I’m starting my training for the Endurance Trail des Templiers race, which takes place in October in southern France and will fe…
Running Streak Month #10keveryday – Another Crazy Experiment I like to shake things up with doing little challenges during the year that are usually supposed to last for a month. It’s fun to follow t…
A Marathon along Alsterwanderweg / Way of St. James One of my annual quests is to do one marathon length run per month. As most of the races are still getting canceled, I need to do this on my…
Smoothies: The Quest for the Best From the time I was a little school boy and up until just a few years ago, I had a weird morning habit. Drinking one liter of cold 3.5 perce…
Kärnten Laufklassiker @Home Some might know that I’ve been trying to run at least one marathon per month for a few years now. In 2020, the plan so far looked like thi…
#runsolo Hamburg Marathon 2020 Encore: CLOCKWISE EDITION This is a short encore of my post from two weeks ago. Then, I ran the Hamburg Marathon course on the former official date of April 19th, 2…
#runsolo Hamburg Marathon 2020 in COVID-19 Times There are no races anymore. The global pandemic of COVID-19 has killed the endurance racing scene as well, which is sad for someone like me…
Building a Windows 10 PC I would never describe myself a gamer. Especially during the last decade, adulting had the upper hand. Still, there were two games which I …
EU Marathons Encore: Nicosia, Cyprus From October 2011 to October 2018 I followed a project called “Teesche’s EU Marathons”. The specifics of the challenge consisted of ru…
New Website Section: The Bookshelf This site is growing. As I’ve mentioned in my recent Goals 2020 post, I will continue reading books this year. Roughly one per month. A…
Goals for 2020, Goals for the new Decade 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…
Goals 2019: State after December and Conclusion 2019 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.…
World Record Holder Christian Hottas’ Billwerder Bucht Marathon 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 i…
Goals 2019: State after November Review the original post, January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, and October here. It’s getting cold outsid…
Cold cold Sülldorfer Feldmark-Marathon 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 a…
Ultra Steinhart 666 😈 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 o…
Frankfurt Marathon: Trying for a new Personal Best 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 mig…
Goals 2019: State after October Review the original post, January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, and September here. I’m going to follow through with…
Hardcore Marathon Training with Peter Greif’s Countdown Plan 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 ex…
Heidelberg Long Distance Trail 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 a…
Goals 2019: State after September Review the original post, January, February, March, April, May, June, July, and August here. The trend continues, September worked out ve…
Marathon Win in Rauchwart Training works! I came to southeastern Austria to run a marathon in 2016, 2018, and now in 2019. The event creator Jürgen Penthor, his f…
Yours Truly in Runner’s World Magazine So yeah, this has been fun! I’ve made it into Runner’s World Germany magazine with my 28 EU marathons, which you might remember from t…
Goals 2019: State after August Status 2019 update #8! Review the original post, January, February, March, April, May, June, and July here. This August has been more succ…
How to Create an Insane Ultra Race: Hamburg Everest 2019 During the weekend of August 17th and 18th of 2019, Michael Mankus and me hosted a running race in Hamburg, in which the main objective was …
Special 35th Birthday: IRONMAN Hamburg 2019 On July 28th of 2019 I turned 35. Mid-thirties. I feel like I have already been lucky to have had quite a few experiences here on Earth so f…
Goals 2019: State after July Alright, another month gone! Review the original post, January, February, March, April, May, and June here. All in all, it’s again bee…
Building a Status Board with Calendar and Weather Info in JavaScript When you’ve got lots of kids there’s a lot to remember each day. Sophie and I have a shared calendar to keep track of most of it, but a …
Olympic Distance Triathlon after Having 4 Kids My dear wife Sophie spent the last roughly eight years being either pregnant or caring for one of our four little baby daughters right aft…
Goals 2019: State after June Half way there! What’s the status after the first six months? Review the original post, January, February, March, April, and May here. …
Double Marathon Weekend: Aabenraa Bjergmarathon & Flensburg liebt dich Marathon Will I have it in me to do two marathons races on two consecutive days? No other way to find out except to try! Of course, this sounds craz…
New Zealand Update April and Conclusions This is a joint post written by my wife Sophie and me. From January to April 2019, our family had the privilege to use our German parental l…
A 100 Kilometer Run Around Hamburg Running continuously for one hundred kilometers in one day. What will you learn? The First Try Initially, my plan was to conquer this dist…
Just Once: Elbtunnel Marathon 2019 It’s rare you get a chance to do something you wanted to do for years but never could and had already given up hope on. This is one of th…
Goals 2019: State after May Five months into 2019. January, February, March, April are done, so I am thinking about my yearly goals again now that May has ended as well…
SodaStream Schlepp-WM – Running up a Skyscraper Time to try something new! A couple weeks ago I first heard about this inaugural event, the so-called “Schlepp-WM”, a “carrying world…
Hamburg Marathon 2019 Back in Hamburg! Three and a half months of being on the other side of the world are over. My hometown has me back. What better way to ce…
Goals 2019: State after April January, February, March, and now April. Here’s how I’ve been doing regarding my yearly goals. 1. Goal: 1 Marathon per Month. Result: 1…
New Zealand Update End of March This is a joint post written by my wife Sophie and me. From January to April 2019, our family has the privilege to use our German parental l…
Goals 2019: State after March A quarter of the year is history. Here’s my monthly update to keep myself accountable for how I’m doing regarding my 2019 goals. January…
The DUAL: Motutapu / Rangitoto Traverse Marathon This marathon concludes my New Zealand marathon adventure and new personal record attempt of completing four marathons in three weeks. Half…
Traveling Long Distances with Children 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 prob…
Te Houtaewa Ultramarathon 63km with a Big Surprise 🏆 I first heard about this event while on a bike trip through the Northland region of New Zealand three years ago. Suddenly, an advertisement …
Hills and Rain at Waiheke Wharf 2 Wharf Marathon 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 stor…
Mountain 2 Surf Marathon in New Plymouth 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 …
Goals 2019: State after February 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 (ult…
New Zealand Update Mid February This is a joint post written by my wife Sophie and me. From January to April 2019, our family has the privilege to use our German parental l…
New Zealand Trail Running: Tarawera Ultramarathon 50k 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, f…
Goals 2019: State after January 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. …
Goals Review 2018, Goals Preview 2019 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…
What happens if you go VEGAN and SUGAR FREE for a whole month? 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…
Missed a Flight, Stranded for the Night? 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 w…
Building a Tiny House This is the post that I really wanted to write but felt like I need my own blog for it. So now, after spending a few days creating this blog…
Throwing Away Money I have started a new experiement, as I do. This one is not about buying new expensive stuff as the title suggests in a click-baity way, but …
3 Marathons in 2 Weeks Stepping it up Again With the end of my initial EU capital challenge closing in, it was about time to do some training. Brussels, the fin…
Creating a JavaScript Color Theme Animation As you might know, I run another blog mainly for my marathon running hobby. It can be found at www.teesches-marathons.eu. Design-wise, I kee…
Time the Time! Is the time for single purpose website over? Maybe a few more years, what do you think? Make your guess and set your own timer with my new s…
The iPhone XS First Day Apple Store Experience I’ve been having a mobile phone contract for more than 20 years now, and it always had the routine included of getting a new phone every 2…
utf8mb4 ✅🤜🏽 – Fun with MySQL This is a tech post. I recently came across a problem with storing data I’d like to share. As you might know, I earn money by running a w…
Read More! There were times when I liked to read books so much, I didn’t even want to stop while at a public swimming pool. Somehow, it got less…
Disenchantment (The TV Show, Not the Feeling) I used to really love The Simpsons when I was younger. I remember literally crying tears of laughter when I first saw these few seconds …
Disenchantment (The Feeling, Not the TV Show) Lately I’ve been thinking about how I would like our world to change and what kind of impact I would like to have on it over the course of…
Goodbye, Awesome Orange Rockerverb Amp! In 2013 I used my newly earned expendable funds to fulfill a childhood dream: I bought this amazing Orange Rockerverb MKII guitar amp. 100…
New MacBook 2018 It’s easy to measure the perceived worth of some items in your life if you take into account how much time you spend with them. That’s w…
Hamburg 1000 Reloaded For a long time now I’ve had the idea in my head to make a sports event happen. Hamburg 1000 Reloaded – Running up a 1,000 meters in…
Rennsteiglauf Supermarathon 74k The year 2018 didn’t start very well for me. An unlucky injury destroyed the first six weeks of training, which led to poor results at m…
Endurance Sports in New Zealand When I first visited this place in December of 2010, I instantly fell in love with it. And I’m not the only one. Tourism is big, which i…
2018 – My Masterplan My Masterplan for 2018 The beginning of a new year constitutes a good opportunity to ponder what kind of year it should be. Sure, it’s …
2017 – My Athletic Review This year I’ve again reached my peak performance. At 32, turned 33, I’m apparently still on an upwards path when it comes to physical …
Falling Through a Ceiling This post was initially published on Medium, and that was one of the reasons for creating this new blog. It feels better to now have my own …
Starting a New Blog A new blog post in a new blog! I think it’s time to take matters into my own hands again and move away from the big brands pushing th…
The Swimrun: A New Experience Just ‘a Triathlon Without the Biking’? Far From it! From the category: I tried it so you don’t have to! What do you do when you fe…
Challenge vs. IRONMAN, Part III: IRONMAN Hamburg First ever IRONMAN Hamburg 2017 To have the most neutral perspective on both triathlon giants, Ironman and Challenge Family, you’ll pro…
Challenge vs. IRONMAN, Part II: Challenge Roth Part II: The Challenge Roth 2017 4:45 AM – the alarm goes off. I’m awake and happy as if it’s my birthday and I’m eight years old…
Challenge vs. IRONMAN, Part I: Training, Kraichgau, Elbschwimmstaffel Part I: Preparing for my Second Long Distance Triathlon Which is Legendary Challenge Roth in southern Germany. Right after I finished my…
Cologne12, Part 2: The Revenge Swimming for 12 Kilometers. Again. About a year ago I tried something I had never done before. Swimming for 12 kilometers without a pause…
Marathons for the Mind w/ Peter Thompson Tuesday Marathon Running for a Good Cause It’s becoming more and more clear to me: marathons bring people together. And they can actual…
Elbe-Lübeck-Kanal Ultramarathon 61k Spoiler Alert: After 42k It Gets Tough For my first major goal of 2017 I’ve chosen to do an ultramarathon for the first time. Because w…
Training Marathon 42.2 Kilometers “Thou shalt never run a full marathon in training“ As it says in the Holy Bible. But why the hell not? As a first big…
TIDE Runners MIDNIGHT HALF High Fives With Strangers Every Wednesday evening at 9:00 PM, a few dozen runners meet in Hamburg’s Schanzenviertel quarters at youth hos…
The Meatless Experience A Year of Not Eating Animals When I met my wife Sophie some 7 or 8 years ago, she hadn’t eaten any meat for about 15 years. I, on the o…
2017 – My Masterplan What’s Coming Up This Year Ever since I’ve started doing this marathon thing, my willingness to plan for the more distant future has …
2016 – My Athletic Review What did I do and how did it go? 2016 has been quite a year. It will be memorable to many of us for a variety of reasons, which are, I fe…
Rauchwart Marathon 2016 Trying to keep warm in November It began with an email I wrote out of the blue to a certain Jürgen Penthor in May 2013. I found his mara…
The Hamburg Triple, Part III: The Hamburg Cyclassics The Hamburg Cyclassics Part I: The Hamburg Marathon Part II: The Hamburg Triathlons Part III: The Hamburg Cyclassics ”Remember, …
The Hamburg Triple, Part II: The Hamburg Triathlons The Hamburg Triathlons Part I: The Hamburg Marathon Part II: The Hamburg Triathlons Part III: The Hamburg Cyclassics This is a lov…
Cologne12 Swimming for 12 Kilometers Everyone can kind of do it, many people hate it, and very few are able to do it properly. In my still on-goin…
The Hamburg Triple, Part I: The Hamburg Marathon The Hamburg Marathon Part I: The Hamburg Marathon Part II: The Hamburg Triathlons Part III: The Hamburg Cyclassics For 2016, I am …
Triathlon Culture in Germany Why is the sport so popular here? A few years into the game of triathlon, I’ve grown very fond of it. It started with some friends who …
The ITU World Triathlon Hamburg The “Hamburg City Man” Now this has very little to do with my EU challenge, but I want to share it anyways. I want to tell you about th…
What is the EU, Actually? [Update February 2019] I’m a fan of the EU. So much so, that I decided to run all 28 European Union capital city marathons. Took me 7 ye…
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This was one of the best articles I've read so far in telling about a race. I couldn't put it down. Your details were so awesome. You made New York just come alive.
Great review, enjoyed reading it and recognize lots off related subjects and hurtles. I’m amazed by all your running and races well done.
Great article! I've read so many long blogs only to get bored in the middle as I suffer terribly from ADD and move on to other things. Yours has been one of few that held my attention all the way to the end.
Your good humor and ease in telling stories make this blog a really cool space. Nice review.
Amazing effort Tim, well done! Thank you for taking the time to write down your thoughts, feelings and memories from the event. There’s always something to learn from your posts and this one was no exception!! Another cracking read.
What a ride! Surely the race, but also reading about it. Thanks for taking the time to write up such a detailed report, almost feel like I was there.