Happy New Year! My 2025 Review and 2026 Preview is Live!

Happy New Year, everyone! 👋

Yet another full year is behind us and a new one lies ahead. Right on time, I managed to put together the annual traditional blog post where I wrote down all the significant things I did in the world of sports in 2025 and detailed my plans for 2026. But before I send you to that blog post by providing you with the big button link, I have a different big announcement to make!

I finished writing the marathon guidebook! (I mentioned this often, you might remember.)

✨ “The Beginner’s Guide to Running Your First Marathon” is here. ✨

It took a while. The first sentences were put down back in January of 2016 and I refined it many times over the past ten years. And now I’m finally happy with it and ready to put it out into the public.

I have decided to make it a digital download only for now and sell it via the independent self-publishing way. The package includes the EPUB file for your e-reader (kindle, Apple Books, everything), a PDF for printing (if you like it old-school), a HTML file to read it right away in your browser, and then I also recorded it all as a proper audiobook (standard MP3 and the great audiobook-specific format of M4B). Pick whatever you like, your phone will suggest the fitting app to use. Of course, you can also download all five formats for your personal archive. 📦

The playtime is about 3:00 hours, but you can read the ~25,000 words in roughly two hours. It’s meant as a fun introduction to the sport, with an easy-going approach to get you motivated and into the right mood for putting something as big as your first marathon on your list. Maybe 2026 is the year?

And since it’s you newsletter subscribers, I’ve added a 50% OFF code for you. It’s FRIENDS50

If you’ve bought and read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts! 

📝 The Big New Plans

And now, let’s move on to 2026. The list of trips I have compiled for cool races is already quite long and I love that. In the first three months alone I’ll already race in 🇬🇧, 🇯🇵, and 🇪🇸. The big highlights for me will be the Challenge Roth long distance triathlon, where I’ll aim for a 9:59h result or faster, and the North Downs Way ultra in the UK, my first ever 100-miler. But there’s a lot more and you can read all about it in the new blog post I already teased:

I’m writing these words from Spain, where I’m currently on a family vacation with all the girls, and that’s also the reason the podcast episode for the new blog post will be released a couple days later this time. I’d like to do this properly with my home recording setup.

📚 Bookshelf Additions

In the past few weeks I finished four more books, bringing my 2025 count up to 17. Not my best year, but solid. The four new ones are highly diverse. First, I was recommended a book on how a Nuclear War could realistically play out in our current times and it was super interesting but also devastating to learn about all these military systems that basically guarantee total annihilation of humanity, only to avoid being the only “losers” such a conflict would produce. Highly recommended read.

Right afterwards, because I already rode the train of doom, I thought I might as well throw in another book about how we will destroy our species. This one deals with the threat that comes from the development of a superhuman artificial intelligence and explains how that would lead to our inevitable destruction. 

I think it’s a smart thing to do not to run around with tunnel-vision and be aware of the threats instead. As part of the society we should all try to care. Afterwards, I needed a break from all that end of the world stuff, though. Also, focusing on the things in my immediate control helped, so here’s The Daily Dad.

And one more, a feel-good book I had on my list for a while now. The time had come, I needed some John Green. The book is amazing in the way that it presents many ups and downs while always staying captivating and emotionally deep. I think John Green is a genius and his writing is brilliant. And since the book celebrates all the quirks of our modern way of life, it was the perfect antidote to the two horrifying books for me. 

For me, this has been a great conclusion of 2025 in terms of books I’ve read. Right now I’m in the middle of a philosophical book written by Michael Schur, a sitcom creator. It’s interesting and entertaining at the same time and has the great title “How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question”—easy! Great gift by my friend Andy. 👋

I wish you all the best for the new year. Make the most of every day!
All the best to you,
—Teesche