My 2025 Review and 2026 Preview

Time for some new goals and a toast to the year that’s over now, 2025!

The most important bits right up front: It’s been a great year. My family and I are doing well, we had no major health crises, and our four daughters are growing like, I don’t know, bamboo? My oldest has just turned 14 and is as tall as her mom, it’s hard to believe. And with my youngest in second grade already, the times with really small children at home are clearly over. Wow.

My wife and I have turned 39 and 41, respectively, so we’re racing towards mid-age, if we’re not there already. I don’t know how those terms are defined. I do feel like I’m at the top of what I’m physically capable of, though. No decline to notice at all, the contrary. Sure, days are long and tough with all the kid and household logistics, but sports keep getting me through it. Sophie has her fulfilling job as a GP and although she’s also often tired in the evenings, we laugh a lot and enjoy life. Her decision to remove a few weekly working hours starting early 2025 was a great blessing to all of us as we can now share the workload at home in a better way. To me it seems like we’re balanced out and could go on like this for a while. That’s not been the case in many of the past years where at least one of us was overworked at all times. I’m really happy about this trajectory.

A recent addition that also enhanced our day-to-day enjoyment has been the exceptionally fluffy dog Miss Marple, nicknamed “Moppel,” “Dorris,” and also for some reason sometimes “Knotch.” We got her from a dog breeder who was done using her as a breeding dog after one go and wanted to get rid of her. She was just one and half years old when we got her in August and she’s super cute and very easy to live with. All my five ladies love her a lot and can’t stop cuddling and feeding her snacks. And I have to admit I like her, too.

Short follow-up on my “Project System Elephant”: It has been two full years now since selling my two remaining companies and becoming a full-time dad. Long term, I really want to find some meaningful work as I’ve explained in the blog post on the topic, but there’s no pressure for the foreseeable future because we kept our lifestyle cost under our theoretical limits and the index funds have still gained quite a bit of value over the past year. So I keep focussing on being a good dad and using the remaining couple hours of the day for sports for now. That’s making me very happy and also tranquil to the degree the kids can throw just about anything at me and I’m able to take it, metaphorically speaking.

And if you remember the other project I talked about in the past, “Moon Marathon,” I have bad news. Nothing happened in that regard. People in power of sending folks to the moon have shifted their priorities significantly, to the detriment of many.

As in previous years, I have read lots of books, and two particular ones have made me change my thinking recently. Both deal with humankind’s impending doom but are coming from two different directions (Nuclear War and Artificial Intelligence). And those books are not the only ones—many smart people are giving us all a single-digit percentage chance to survive the next couple hundred years. It’s no secret that we’re behaving completely unsustainably, and from the looks of it we’re not about to change that anytime soon. It feels a bit like someone with a terminal illness might start to change their outlook, just on a societal level.

I have made my peace with it.

Using the old saying “Control what you can control,” I have started asking myself other questions lately. 

🧭 What Does It Mean to Lead a Full Life?

The simple answer is to do a lot of the things you enjoy. That’s not true for anyone, though. If you enjoy being a Nazi, please stop it and find something else to enjoy. (I feel like I’ve already made a variation of that joke in a former blog post, but the point stands. Now more than ever.)

But if what you enjoy is something that’s not hurting anyone including yourself, maximize it.

In my mind I keep coming back to a trigger moment in my life, January 2010, Cape Town. Sixteen years back. I was meeting a person named Dieter Mielke, who is the great-uncle of my wife, then girlfriend, Sophie. He was around eighty years old at the time and now he’s well into his 90s. During that evening we first met he was talking non-stop about his many accomplishments in life, leaving no room at all for me to share some. Not that I had any accomplishments to contribute or that he would have listened, for that matter, I just noticed that he has led a very full life. Much more full than any other person his age I had so far been in contact with. And a big part of me wanted to start finally living a really full life as well at that moment. Not in order to hold hour-long monologues, that’s what blogs are for, but because doing all the things possible to do as a human is clearly superior to just doing nothing for decades. I had done enough of that already at the point.

Dieter had met his Dutch wife Mieke during his years being a cloths salesman in Persia (now Iran), migrated to South Africa and built fabric factories, employed many people, traveled the world, took up sailing and won races, built a shopping mall in Cape Town, learned to fly planes well into his 70s, regularly raced the annual 110k Argus bike race way into his 80s, and told me all that just before throwing a shotgun into my hands after dinner and a bottle of wine, saying he and I needed to go take down the guys who last week stole some of his 3,000 sheep right now. So we jumped into his 4x4 and frantically drove around his farm that extended all the way to the horizon on all sides, located right in the middle of the Karoo desert, in the middle of the night. Fortunately, we only found a wild pig and I was able to pretend to not have been fast enough to shoot it before it escaped. I know he sometimes reads this blog, sorry Dieter! If your offer still stands to crew me at the Comrades Ultramarathon, it’s on the list!

Although what he achieved in his life and what I would like to achieve in my life only have a very small overlap, I have lots of respect for it.

The point is:

Only if you do things, you’ll have something to remember and also to talk about at the end. Staying home doing nothing amounts to nothing. Do more. Do all the things while you can.

For plain recreational reasons, I sometimes play video games such as the Grand Theft Auto series or, more recently, the two Red Dead Redemption ones. Those all feature a single player story mode that leads you through a bunch of missions until you reach the end of the story arc. During the time, countless side missions are presented but remain optional and are not necessary to beat the games. When finishing the main storyline, you see a percentage amount of how much of all the missions you’ve done in total, and by doing just the main quests, you might end up at around 60–70%. I’m the kind of guy who at that stage tries to figure out how to get the remaining percentage points to go to a full 100, chips away at it, and feels some satisfaction when that moment is reached.

This year, I realized this inclination of mine could be taken into real life. So I made the mental note to start to consciously aim for 100% Completion of Life whenever presented with an opportunity to choose, especially if it’s just a fun little side quest. As so often with these things, they sound ridiculous at first, but help me and fill me with joy and add a certain playfulness in to my otherwise quite earnest and disciplined life, raising four kids.

My definition of a full life, a life that’s lived well, is therefore one that contains lots of stories to tell—one that is lived chasing 100% completion.

Obviously it’s better to realize this rather early in life and I’m happy to have done so now. It has already shaped a few new plans of mine.

Two main new long-term goals have crept on my list that way this year. Both were out of scope in the past—I just never thought I’d have it in me to complete them—but now I have gained the confidence I might in fact be able to chase them. The 100% Completion idea put it over the top.

🌺 New Major Goal #1: The IRONMAN Hawaii

It’s the magical place were triathlon started. I have loved triathlon for a long time now, watched the pro’s race nearly every year, but for humility reasons I’ve always put the Hawaii goal away. Qualifying for it is super tough, you’ve got to be among the best handful of athletes of your age group at an IRONMAN brand long distance race to make it. It requires lots of effort to get there. But when I looked at my much improved marathon times over the past years, the plan suddenly unlocked in my head. It could be possible. And it would be just so cool to one day run down Ali’i Drive after having swum in the Pacific, biked to Hawi and back, and run through the desolate Energy Lab streets. That vision alone fills me with so much motivation, I’m getting goosebumps thinking about it. And that’s a clear reason to follow up on the goal.

As with some other major long-term goals of mine, I have put together a page on my website detailing the plan and showing my current status. It’s at teesche.com/hawaii.

🏔️ New Major Goal #2: The Big Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc

The world of ultrarunning has its own “Hawaii” and that’s the UTMB in Chamonix, France. Sure, the Western States 100 is also often counted as being up there, but both races have quite a different approach. There is a lot speaking against the big loop around the French massif, though. One example is how corporate it has all become. Entrance fees have exploded, the environmental cost isn’t nothing, and the qualification process is designed in such a way as to maximize pulling money out of people. Big similarities between UTMB and IRONMAN, and it’s no coincidence the companies have had a merger a few years back.

But on the other hand, it’s breathtakingly beautiful and celebrates the sport of ultrarunning like nothing else in the world. The event has such a huge global standing, everyone’s there. It feels like the epicenter of it all, and it probably is. I’ve got my own taste of it by doing the little-sister race “CCC” this year, and after those 105 kilometers (65 mi) I said to Sophie “Never ever am I EVER going to go for the full UTMB loop”—because I was just so wrecked after the grueling effort it took to make it to the finish line.

But that’s the funny thing about ultras: The feeling right after a long and hard race is diametrically opposed to the feeling about it just a few hours later. And soon enough I thought I might have it in me to one day complete that 175 kilometer (110 mi), 10,000 meter (33,000 ft) of climbing, literal mountain of a race.

▶️ In 2026, I will make my first efforts to move towards those two starting lines in Kona and Chamonix, but both projects will take me many years to get done. I’m looking forward to the process.

As in the past years, I have set three central goals for the immediate future, the year of 2026. There are lots of similarities to the ones from 2025, so here’s my review/preview mix of them:

3️⃣ The Big Three

🏊‍♂️🚴‍♂️🏃‍♂️ #1: Completing Challenge Roth Triathlon in Under 10 Hours

In summer of 2024 when I accompanied and supported my friend Mathias to his first long distance triathlon finish ever, which we had decided should happen at Challenge Roth, my own triathlon fire was sparked as well. The place is just so amazing, it’s hard not to catch the bug. And since my previous Roth finish has been so long ago (2017) and my most recent long distance triathlon finish as well (2019), enough brain space was there to cause me to take on the task once more. And now I’m really into it. Challenge Roth won’t bring me closer to that Hawaii goal in a direct way, because it’s not of the IRONMAN brand, but it will be a great day and chance to get my training up there in order to move towards the athletic abilities required for that eventual Hawaii qualifier race.

I’m looking forward to the drive down to Roth in southern Germany with Mathias and racing the course to the best of my abilities. My rough target is a 1:10h swim, 5:30h bike, and 3:10h run. Adding the two transitions, Sub-10 could be possible.

🇬🇧 #2: Finishing a Western States Qualifier Race: The North Downs Way in England

Ticking off the Western States qualifier has been an annual tradition for a while now. In 2025 I went the unnecessary extra-mile and completed two: Tuscany Crossing 103K and the mentioned CCC during the UTMB race festival. Both were amazing in their own regards. In Tuscany, I enjoyed the beautiful scenery, the food, the DIY-style race organization that was handled with lots of love, and the relaxed weekend itself. My performance there was also really good by my standards, with just 13:22 hours for the 103 kilometers (64 mi) including 3,800 meters (12,500 ft) of vertical gain I landed at 40th male of a couple hundred starters.

Four months later, racing the CCC in Italy, Switzerland, and France was a whole different story. Although the distance was about the same, the elevation gain was significantly higher with about 6,000 meters (20,000 ft). The first half of the race was incredibly beautiful as well, but the second half, which happened during the night for me, was rainy, muddy, and on quite technical terrain. It has been great to have Sophie with me and she got really into the ultra crewing mindset. It gave me a bunch more energy and led to us having a wonderful weekend in the end.

For 2026, I have planned not two, but just one long race to put my name into the Western States lottery hat. It has been quite a strain to do two. On the other hand, that experience led me to finally gather the confidence needed to try my best at my first ever 100-mile race. I’ve never so far did that distance. My longest race ever was the 122 kilometer Lavaredo Ultra Trail, so going for 160 kilometers would add around another marathon to the total. But I feel like I’m ready. So I signed up for the North Downs Way, early August, which is supposed to be more comparable to Tuscany than to the Alps from an elevation standpoint. That plays to my strengths. Looking forward to doing my first ultra in the UK!

Oh yeah, and it’s almost a side note at this point, but of course I failed at the Western States lottery for 2026 again, as roughly 98% of all entrants did. With my 8 accumulated tickets I had a chance of 2.4% of getting in. California will have to wait!

💨 #3: A New Marathon Personal Best of Around 2:48h

Although I did manage to check off my marathon-specific goal of 2025 by running a new personal best (2:55:47) and Boston Qualified with that result (3:00:26 was the 2026 cut-off for my age group of the male 40-44 year–olds), I fell short of making it to my dream of running a 4:00 minute per kilometer pace marathon. I had a really good training block created by coach Martin Grüning for me, but unfortunately caught the cold just two weeks before my race and couldn’t recover back to a full 100% in time. The level I was at would have definitely made it possible to run a 2:48h marathon, so I want to put that to the test in 2026. I’m better with races early in the year, because all the fun triathlons and ultras during the summer make it hard for me to focus solely on marathon training. My plan is to race fast at Barcelona Marathon on March 15th and my training for it has already started. The race felt perfect for me in 2025, so I’m repeating the attempt there. Really looking forward to it.

When will I count this as a success?

I’ve decided to go with an official finishing time of 2:48:46 as the mark I’ll chase. That’s the result I’d get if I ran for 42.195 kilometers at a straight 4:00 min/km pace. My own GPS tracking won’t be an accurate enough indication—usually because it’s impossible to run the perfect line, the watch will add a few hundred meters—, although I’d love to have that Strava activity actually say 4:00 min/km average pace and not 4:02 just because the measured distance was 42.5 kilometers. Of course it doesn’t really matter, but I’m a numbers guy and enjoy this type of thing.

Regarding Boston: Although I qualified for 2026, I won’t go back because Daughter #3 has her birthday on Patriots Day weekend, which will be the same for 2027. And also because I have a different huge trip planned in spring, details down below. I’d love to run Boston again though. 2028, 2029, 2030 all would work fine in my calendar. Reasons to keep up the pace!

🕺 The Fun Ones

🏃‍♂️📚 #1: Running 12 Marathons & Reading 12 Books

In my list of priorities, the 12&12 has been moved down from a Big Three Goal to one of the fun ones, mainly because it happens naturally these days and I don’t need to put much effort in anymore.

I used to play around with the numbers here, but 12&12 worked great for me in 2025 so I’m keeping it. I landed on 14 Marathons and 17 Books in 2025 without even trying. That’s how ingrained the idea is in me. I still feel no need to increase the goal numbers, and setting it at 12 feels really natural because of the numbers of months in a year.

By the way, in 2025 I incidentally crossed over into the 100 lifetime marathon races done. It did not mean that much to me, I spent the 100th race as the backup pacer for 3:30h at Flensburg Marathon, which was a beautiful race to do so but not a big planned celebration of that anniversary for me. I’m now eligible to join the national “100 Marathon Club” but I haven’t done so yet. But just for the heck of it I built a little website to show my full marathon races list with some stats and personal notes on each race at teesche.com/races. From April 2010 to September 2025, it took just over 15 years for me to complete 100 marathon races.

The Big Three Goals of 2025 all went great and added enjoyment to my life. That’s the main reason to keep going with it.

And some more fun side quests round off the year.

🗼 #2: Completing the Original Six World Marathon Majors in Tokyo

Finally got drawn at the lottery! This took a bunch of years of trying. I don’t remember how many exactly, but I think around five. Lots of people want to race Tokyo and one of the main reasons for it is that it’s the 6th Marathon Major. For me, it’ll be the last one for now because I’ve done the marathons in Berlin, London, Boston, New York City, and Chicago already.

I’m really looking forward to that trip to Japan. Super curious about how a marathon race in that specific country will go. Will the crowds be stereotypically quiet and respectful? Bowing down instead of screaming words of encouragement? I’ll find out on March 1st.

Since the race is just two weeks before my go at a new personal best in Barcelona, I’ll take it super easy and just aim to soak in the atmosphere, sort of like a victory lap for completing the six Majors. Getting that special 6-fold medal hung around my neck at the finish will be a highlight.

🇩🇪 #3: Completing My 16 German Federal States Marathons List

As with the World Marathon Majors, I’m currently just one short, but will complete the set in 2026.

As of right now I’m standing at 15, just missing the state of Brandenburg. That one has been on my list for a while, because there’s just one noteworthy marathon race in the state that I’m aware of, the Spreewald Marathon. And it usually collides with my hometown marathon in Hamburg every year—not so, in 2026. They are one week apart, finally! So I got the ticket and look forward to eating lots of pickles while there, which is a regional specialty.

😎 #4: Bucket List Goal: Beating my Buddy Krischi’s Otterndorf Triathlon Time

It’s been a long time coming! Krischi is the one who got me into running and triathlons in the first place. This is about 15 years in the past now, and since then I have beaten every single one of his personal bests, basically just to rub it in his face I’m the faster one now. He won’t take it as an offense, though, ever the tranquil guy, he’s just happy for me.

But I won’t let that distract me!!!

The one result that remains where he is still faster than me, is the lovely little sprint distance triathlon race at Otterndorf. He managed a 1:08:18 back in 2009 and although I did the race a few times, I never had the fitness level to get close to that. Until a few years back. Timing conflicts did the rest, but in 2026 it’s going to happen. I have signed up and will aim to destroy the 1:08h on August 30th. Full steam ahead!

Take that, Krischi! 😈

4️⃣2️⃣ #5: Birthday Marathons

This is another fun one. I will turn 42 years old on July 28th of 2026. That number has a lot of significance to me because of the marathon distance. So of course I will celebrate by running a marathon on my birthday, hopefully together with a few friends like in 2024.

It’s during our Hamburg summer holidays, so unfortunately lots of friends will be on vacation, and the remaining ones might have work on that normal Tuesday. Anyways, I’ll run. It’s a milestone for me.

But what about the exact marathon distance in kilometers, 42.195? My real marathon birthday! It will happen on October 7th, 2026. Unfortunately, that’s a Wednesday, no school holidays. I plan on running a marathon on that day anyways, too. Maybe a couple of friends will join in, or maybe it’ll be a spiritual thing just with myself. I’ll take it all, gladly. Running is the best.

🤏 … and Some Even Less Important Goals!

In no particular order, here it goes:

• Keep my running streak going all through 2026. Still massively fun to me. On December 31st of 2025 I completed four full years, so the 2026-specific goal is to reach five years. But I’m not planning on stopping then.

• Complete all the Zwift (virtual cycling) route badges. This isn’t as easy, but I’ve already made good progress in 2025 at stand at 197 of the current 224 badges, including the longest route in existence, the 174 kilometer PRL Full which I did a few weeks back. A bunch of tough and long ones are still among the missing ones, but setting this goal will make it easier for me to get in the long training rides I need to succeed at Challenge Roth.

• My blog post about how I finally cracked the Sub-3 Hour Marathon back in 2024 is still the most popular one by far on my website. I noticed that many visitors come from search engines and are looking for a short and easy-to-follow training plan. So my idea is to summarize the gist of what I did to succeed at the race into a concise training plan for people to download.

• I usually don’t do official races at distances shorter than a half marathon, but I still like to improve my personal bests on the 5k and 10k as part of my training, just using my own GPS tracking and no official measuring. For 2026, I will see if the stars align so I could give the following new benchmarks a go:

  • 5 km in under 18:00 minutes → 3:36 min/km pace (5:48 min/mi)
  • 10 km in under 37:30 minutes → 3:45 min/km pace (6:02 min/mi)
  • 21.1 km in under 1:20:00 hours → 3:48 min/km pace (6:07 min/mi)

  I think I stand a solid chance at the 5k and 10k, but for the half marathon I’d have to do some specific training. On that distance, my current best is a 3:52 min/km average pace (from January 2025) and although those 4 seconds per kilometer don’t seem like much, it adds up and is still a significant jump.

And that’s the full list of all my plans for 2026!

I’ll continue with some of the 2025 achievements I’m proud of or which I just enjoyed.

📖 Marathon Guidebook Finally Done!

Early on into my marathon running I had the idea to write a book about marathon running for beginners that would not focus on all the data and strict training planning, but put a lot more emphasis on the fun aspect and show an easy-going way to get there while still providing readers with the necessary information.

The first sentences were written in January of 2016. Many times I wasn’t sure about the project anymore and put it on ice, only to take it up again and rewrite long sections. In early 2025 I made focussed effort during a weeklong “workation” I took in London, to finish it and got to about 95%.

The proofreading, corrections, and finishing touches happened during the late fall of this year, and in a frantic effort over the past December weeks, I pushed through to finish the whole product with a bunch of e-book formats and recorded audiobook, including the little shop website to sell it to those interested.

I’m very happy about how it turned out and I think it will provide lots of value for people new to the hobby of running who are interested in chasing that first ever marathon finish.

It’s called “The Beginner’s Guide to Running Your First Marathon,” subtitle “A Simple How-to for Casual Runners and Non-Runners Ready to Level Up.”

And you can get it here!

🏙️ EverySingleStreet Hamburg Progress

This is a fun project I’m really enjoying, being a numbers guy. The idea is to run through all the streets on Hamburg turf, as the name suggests. On December 31st, 2025, there are 8,084 runnable and named streets in the city, totaling 4,274 kilometers (2,655 miles).

This is at least a multi-year project, probably even a multi-decade one. After plucking all the low hanging fruits in 2024 since getting my first ever navigation enabled wrist watch, I moved on to run through lots of streets which are a bit further away from my home in 2025. Some I reached via a bike ride, most via the Hamburg train system, and a handful of street-collecting runs required a car trip. The further away from home I get, the more of a time investment this has become, of course.

In the back of my head I thought making it to the Top 10 street collecting runners in Hamburg would be cool, and I made it to the number 10 spot for a short time until the others overtook again. Right now, I’m in 12th place in Hamburg on the platform I chose, which is CityStrides.com.

I stand at 3,204 streets completed, which amounts to 39.63% of the whole of Hamburg.

Towards the end of 2025 I realized that getting the borough of Eimsbüttel to 100% would be possible, and managed to do that by doing a few frantic last-minute trips to the neighborhood of Niendorf inside of it. A pretty little place! Well, not so little, in fact.

With two out of Hamburg’s seven boroughs now done, I’m not sure where to go next. In 2026 I’ll probably not make that much progress, but still aim to go on a few collecting sprees from time to time, if the time allows for it.

🍺🏴‍☠️ The DIY Races: Munich Breweries Ultra & BremenSanktPauli 100

I put out a two-parter blog post about those two races we put together. Part 1 about MBU and Part 2 about BSP100. Both were big highlights for me this year.

Looking forward to the next Munich Breweries Ultra, happening on May 31st in 2026 on Munich’s central Marienplatz at 5:30 am. Sign up here and be there!

The BremenSanktPauli 100 won’t take place in 2026 because it requires too much work for us to do it annually. We have decided to make it an event that happens every other year, so 2027 will be the next time. But for that I’m also looking forward to already.

Speaking of DIY things.

🏠 Tiny House Tear-Down and Terrace Construction

Back in 2018, I constructed a little house inside my backyard and put two blog posts about it online. The first one detailed the initial construction, while in the second one I talked about how I improved the water-resistance of it. Well, not so well, it turned out.

Over the past couple years some leakage led to lots of mold until the point was reached where it was beyond repair so I decided to take the house down. It took quite a lot of effort to do so, because I didn’t just come in with a wrecking ball like Miley Cyrus, but carefully took all the pieces apart and sorted the materials for reuse. Most of it I was able to sell to people who could still use it to build new structures with it, but some had to be discarded at the city’s dump.

It was so cool while it lasted, but now it’s in the past and I’ve decided to put the concrete foundations I made to good use by building a new deck on top of them. Maybe a pre-made sauna hut will go on it soon, I don’t know yet. It was fun working with wood once more, though.

📱 My Current Homescreen

Looking at old screenshots made me a bit nostalgic lately. So I decided to put the current version in here so my 2036 self will find it funny.

🤳 The Selfie Video

Using the “Close-up” app, I have again taken daily selfies to document my visual decline as I age during this year. Here we go!

👸 The 1:1 Weekend Trips

With my four daughters, it’s often rare I get to spend time with just one of them, catering to her individual needs only and increasing the level of bond between her and me. That’s why I have made it a tradition to go on weekend city trips and take just one daughter. This year I did two such trips, bringing the total so far to 11.

Daughter #1 and I went to Athens, Greece, and spend time exploring the ancient buildings, walked in Socrates’s footsteps, dashed a lap at the Panathenaic Stadium, hit a bunch of museums and enjoyed lots of good food in the hot 30C sun.

Daughter #3 and I went to Paris, France, had a great day at Disneyland Paris, and climbed up the stairs of Eiffel Tower before walking across the rainy city for the remainder of the time. But our highlight was a little hotel room picknick we did on the last evening. Sitting across each other on the floor with baguette and cheeses, we just talked for hours.

In 2026 I plan on doing at least two more such trips, including the first one with my youngest, because she’s old enough now, too. The threshold I set is that the daughter has to be aware of the cities in Europe and select one for a trip based on some good arguments for it.

🖼️ It’s Been Quite a Year: Closing It off with Some More Photo Highlights

Thanks for reading—and now onwards to 2026!