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There I was, having made it to the starting area with a few minutes to spare, hoping that the quick walk from the hotel across the river would serve as a minimal warmup. I loosened my joints, shook out a bit of anxiety, and then the starting pistol fired. Being in the back of the pen forced me to start at a slower pace, which allowed me to warm up my legs a bit further. The field thinned out quickly, and I frequently had to slow my pace to conserve energy. My goal was afterall to run two 10km laps, knowing I could handle the first one, but dreading the second, unsure how well I would manage it. The weather was great, almost too warm, and so sunny that I regretted not bringing sunglasses. The run along the Main river in Frankfurt mostly offered enough space for all the runners and other people on the paths. However, at the tourist end of the iron footbridge, visitors crossing the path were too focused on their phone screens and had to be actively avoided. The first lap went smoothly, an...

The nice thing about plans is: they often feel very pleasing until reality gets in the way. Earlier this year, I started outlining which running events I wanted to participate in and sign up for. After all, I still need that extra external motivation to train regularly. The first run on the list was a 10k in Munich, followed by ramping up my training to run 20k in Frankfurt tomorrow. It sounded like a good plan to kickstart my running in 2024 and seemed quite feasible. Depending on how well I perform, I also plan to decide whether to stick to my original plan to run my first marathon next year or attempt it this year. I am fully aware that I may be overambitious. It is the same tempting logic that led me to run a half-marathon. Two years ago, after my first 10k race, fueled by the accomplishment, I started using 'runner’s math': Running a half-marathon shouldn't be that hard—it's just two 10k runs back-to-back. And what is a 10k if not merely two 5k runs? With regular t...

There are days when I really have mixed feelings about an upcoming training run. I saw it pop up on my calendar a week ago: Easy Run, 2 hours on Sunday, and I knew that this was probably going to be my longest training run before the race in Frankfurt. The weather forecast looked decent, and I was really looking forward to seeing how I would fare over those two hours. After the winter break and a number of skipped runs in the previous weeks, I have been starting to doubt if I am ready to run the 20k in Frankfurt. And when waking up this morning, stretching and loosening my legs, I still could feel some fatigue from my Friday run in my lower legs. So I ended up procrastinating my run all day long. First with a steam engine ride and then a walk around the neighboring town. And after all that, getting ready for my run still took a few hours of procrastination, long enough to know that I would be back home after sunset if I were to complete the full run. After finally stepping out and star...