December 2024: Losing at Lotteries, Starting a New Training Plan, and Two New Blog Posts

Moinsen, everyone! 👋

I hope you’re all doing great and get to enjoy this last month of 2024. The season of snotty noses and less daylight (in the northern hemisphere) is here and it can be a challenge to make it through these weeks for some. The most important thing is to take care of oneself and each other. 

In this newsletter edition I have two new blog posts for you, one new bookshelf addition, and some updates on my new marathon training plan. To me, this is quite exciting and if there’s a chance my enthusiasm inspires you too, I’ll take it! 

First off, the previous weeks were very unlucky for me regarding the race lotteries I entered. I not just failed at one or two, but exactly three different lotteries for sought-after races. 

1. Tokyo Marathon. This year, I pulled all the triggers and used the immense amount of different options to increase my chances, but in the end still lost all drawings. Third year in a row. No six-star medal for finishing all World Marathon Majors for me in 2025. It’s fine though, the race is not running away.
2. Berlin Marathon. Although it’s one of the Majors I’ve already done, I still enter the lottery often. It’s nearby and it’s a great race, so I’d like to be there one more time. But again, I failed – I think for the third consecutive time now as well. 
3. Western States 100. This one is most important to me, but as the chances theoretically double with every year I finish a qualifier race and enter the lottery again, the number of other entrants increases, too. With a 1.7% chance this year, I expectedly wasn’t drawn yesterday. There’s a meme called “You’re Never Getting into Western States” for a reason 😂😭.

Not going to lie, I was a bit sad following all these disappointments, especially the Western States one, even though it was the one with the smallest theoretical chance.

The upside is that apparently running is getting more and more popular over the years. My hometown’s Hamburg Marathon was fully sold out five months before the race date this time, a new record. This means that not only are more people interested in an active lifestyle, more people also reach that level of being able to do these activities. When sports become more mainstream, everyone wins. 

📋 End of the Year

Nearing the end of each year, I have made it a habit to publish a blog post about my (mostly athletic) highlights and the outlook for the next year. I have started to make some notes and look forward to writing it all down. Despite the three mentioned lottery disappointments, I have a bunch of other ideas and some of them already confirmed. I’m looking forward to visiting a few other countries for races and following up on some adjusted goals, too.

🏃 20 Marathons and 📚 20 Books in 2024

One of the goals I’ve set annually is running a certain amount of marathons and reading a certain amount of books. Sometimes I’ve failed, sometimes not, but it’s always helped me keep the motivation up high and explore new things. Right now, I’m at 20 marathons and 19 books completed. Book 20 is called “A Therapeutic Journey” by Alain de Botton, and so far it’s wonderful. But then, former German chancellor Angela Merkel’s autobiography was released, so I’m currently in the middle of both books! Spoilers, for 2025 I’ll probably reduce the numbers and go back to 12 & 12. Seems like a very natural number, one per month each. That way, quality gets a larger emphasis.

🏦 Utopia for Realists

The most recent book I’ve read has this title and it was a real eye-opener. I’m currently on a quest to find out for what productive cause I would like to use my time in the future, when the kids don’t require as much attention anymore as they do now. One of them might be to engage in political activity or pick a singular cause of it. This book’s main topic concerns the implementation of a universal basic income. You might be skeptical if this could work on a grand scale, as am I. But the book made lots of great points of why we should continue to try. Many experiments have yielded promising results. It’s time to open up our minds to the possibility at least.

🎯 The New Marathon PR Target

After reaching my huge goal of running a Sub-3 Hour Marathon not just once this year, but twice even, I’ve said I’m happy with that and probably won’t pursue an even better Personal Record. How often I’ve said things like these only to revise them later! 😄

My mind just wasn’t there. But over the months, that changed. I think it’s a sign of growth that it does. I’m not afraid to embarrass myself a little bit by changing my goals. 

It was actually my friend Nico who gave me the idea. He made a very strong case that I would be able to run an even faster marathon. And he reminded me of how cool it was when we both ran Boston Marathon in 2023. Coincidentally, it’s also gotten a lot harder to qualify for Boston in the future. I’d have to run below 3:05h in my age group at a qualifier marathon race, but since globally so many people actually do that and the B.A.A. accepts only the fastest ones out of those, it’s more likely to be around 2:55h to get into Boston 2026.

Why not try and see if I can do that! And since audacious goals are great and have served me well in the past, I’ve done some calculating and came up with idea to try to do a 4:00 minute per kilometer average. This would lead to a 2:48:47h finishing time. A big leap, but actually just a 5% increase from my current best. It’s realistic, but right on the edge. 

It happened by accident that my friend Martin Grüning had some openings to coach ambitious hobby runners such as me, so we entered into a little partnership. He’s provided me with a proper training plan and advice. Him being the editor-in-chief of German Runner’s World Magazine and a former Pro with a PR of 2:13h himself certainly helps a lot.

The main training plan is 13 weeks total until my designated race for the record, the Bienwald Marathon that helped me beat three hours this March, too. I’ve selected that race again for this attempt. Martin also made a little “Easing into it” plan for the two weeks before the 13 week plan would start, which I have now completed. Tough two weeks, but very effective. I already feel so much faster and the numbers confirm that.

I’m highly motivated and actually looking forward to all the very tough sessions, such as the upcoming 8x800m intervals at 3:40min/km pace on Tuesday. Follow along on my Strava if you’re interested!

🧑‍🚀 Shooting for the Moon

Speaking of audacious goals, I’ve previously stated that I think it would be so cool to one day run a marathon on the moon. I’m in love with space and I’d be over the moon if this actually happened. I think and hope I have a few more decades left on Earth and progress towards making space travel more accessible is currently under way again. So I’ve made a little landing page to put this idea into the public at moon-marathon.com. And I’ve written a blog post about it, too. I go into more detail around the general idea and why I came up with it. 

🚭 How I Quit Smoking

I think it’s fair to say I would never be where I am today if I hadn’t quit smoking nine years ago. Not just my fitness level would be way worse, many other aspects of my life would be, too. 

I’ve mentioned how I’ve successfully quit and never relapsed here on the blog before and have gotten a few replies and inquiries from readers for help. I always responded and offered advice, but now I’ve put it all into writing to have something to point to.

And as a little add-on I’ve coded this simple Smoking Cost Calculator for you to play around with in case you’re wondering how much smoking actually costs, money-wise.

Here’s my post, detailing what helped me to finally quit after a handful of unsuccessful attempts.

And that’s it with this packed December newsletter – I hope you’ll have a great time wherever you are on the planet. And I’ll see you in 2025!

All the best,
– Teesche