April 2024: Three New Books on the Shelf, a Huge Half Marathon Personal Record, and a Blog Post About Building Software

Moinsen, everyone! 👋

It’s time for the April newsletter. Let’s start this with a bang, I have recently significantly improved my half marathon time to just 1:22:01 hours! You might remember my previous blog post describing the training routine I followed for the past few months and which led me to finally break the 3:00 hour barrier at the full marathon, so naturally I thought I’d use the fitness in order to see how fast I can go on half the distance, too. 

And I even surprised myself: I had a 1:23:XX in my head, on a good day. But it turned out to be a spectacular day. The conditions couldn’t have been better, the course was as pristine as I remembered it from last time I raced there, and luck was also on my side. So I smashed my record and paced it very carefully, too. The average pace was at 3:53 minutes per kilometer. At that speed I would have struggled to do fast and short intervals just a few years ago! It’s amazing how far you can go with focused running training.

In the end I came in 12th place of nearly 700 runners. Quite an achievement, too. I’m quite proud of it.

Three More Books Finished

While training, I decided to read the fairly recently published German language book “Marathon kann jede*r” written by Martin Grüning and Sonja von Opel. It’s a big knowledge drop from these highly experienced runners. Even though I’m not in the main focus group here as it’s more aimed at beginners, I was able to take away quite a bunch of helpful facts.

Check out my post about “Marathon kann jede*r” here

At the same time I raced through the last two remaining books of the Harry Potter saga. Raced, because these are so addictive! As millions before me, I couldn’t put them down. I finished the seventh and last book right on time, while on the plane to London to see the Harry Potter Warner Brothers Studio Tour with my wife and kids, who are all fans. 

My thoughts on Half-Blood Prince

My thoughts on Deathly Hallows

I’m very glad I’ve read them all. And the Studio Tour in London was so cool, you should definitely try to go there if you’re a Harry Potter fan as well!

Lastly, a New Blog Post!

This time it’s not about running. As rarely as that happens. I’m still happy I published it, even though it might not cater to the interest of most of you who follow me for my running related story-telling. This time I wrote about the little software tool I’ve developed in 2007 and maintained over all these years until recently building a big international relaunch for it on my own. I’m very interested in the feedback on it – the tool itself as well as the blog post. Tell me what you think!

Thanks again for reading, and all the best to you all!
– Teesche