Sunday April 30th 2006 was my big day. After all the training, the preparations and of course being thrown back so often – there was no turning back...

But let’s take a look back just the same. If anybody would have told me 15 years ago, that I was to run a marathon, I would’ve had a good laugh at that (I mean, I weighed like over 100 kg at the time!)! And I was more into weightlifting and that mostly in Winter because in Summer I only lifted my beer mug. Although, I did sometimes run 5 km...

However, times changed and with them I changed, too. I lost a lot of weight – thank God for that – because I guess if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be with my Dream-Girl right now (probably still just be dreaming of her). All of a sudden I wanted to run – run, run, run… I trained for the half marathon in Stuttgart and for some reason I always had to give up. Last year I was registered to run in Stuttgart again and just two weeks before the competition I tore a muscle fibre in my left calf – shit! Ok – I didn’t want to give in, so I recovered and registered for the half marathon in Karlsruhe, which was to take place in September. After 2 weeks of training I got myself a ruptured hernia and was operated immediately – fuckin’ shit! It was still 8 weeks to go but I couldn’t start with my training because I actually couldn’t do anything at the moment. So it took me 5 weeks to recover and then I trained like Hell for 3 and actually made it over the finish line (for the first time!) in 1:38:03.

Well, and then I wanted more – no more half – no way – I wanted it all. So I registered for the marathon in Freiburg (April 2^nd). I had to do my training during the Winter and let me tell you it was one fuckin’ hard Winter that year – I ran through snow, hail (ouch!) and temperatures below 0° Celsius. I was ready – I was fit – until 2 days before the race. I was knocked down by a mean cold. Fuck man, what was I supposed to do – was all my training to be worthless? I only wanted to run one marathon in my life. The training just takes too much time – running over 30 km is really pretty nice…

Ok – so what I needed was another race somewhere soon and somewhere near. The only one I found was in Salzburg, Austria. I registered on the day I was supposed to be running in Freiburg - the only thing running was my nose. Bad thing was that Tina wouldn’t be able to accompany me to Salzburg – she had to work over that weekend and had no chance of getting off. But as so often she stood by my side and helped me where ever she could! Good thing was that I had a friend there I knew from our Shire Horse Forum, so I could sleep over at his place – cool! So I jumped into my car on Saturday April 29^th and hit the road for Austria.

Michael"Stingray" and his wife were perfect hosts. Michael was to be my manager, too (means he drove me to the race and held all my spare clothing during the competition…).

The race began precisely at 9 am. We had to run two rounds both 21 km long. I was pretty nervous and just started to run. It was easy going and my average was actually 15 seconds faster than I had reckoned with.

During the last kilometre of the first round I was easily able to talk to a guy from London, who actually jumped in for his wife, who was sick herself. He only ran the half distance though.

I ran the first round in 1:40 – more than perfect actually, until…

...the second round began. I was heading straight towards Hell. All of a sudden there were very few runners around – most of them had chosen the half marathon. There weren’t many spectators on this fresh sunny day to start off with (4 ° C at the beginning and 8 ° at the end!), so it was kinda lonely out there. I started to slow down but at first thought that everything was still ok. I took my time to eat my energy bars and to drink water. After running 25 km my legs got heavy and when I say heavy then I mean HEAVY. I again got slower and my muscles started to get tense.

After 30 km I thought that I was going to get spasms in all different parts of my legs. The time I had intented to achieve this murderous run in was long gone – I had to make walking breaks – I still had 12 kilometers ahead of me – but how in the Hell was I supposed to get through them. I walked – I ran – I walked. The fast guys were already taking a shower und the rest of us were torturing ourselves along the way. There was always someone standing on the side – trying to recover himself. “C’mon – you’ll make it!” „We’ll get ourselves through the last 5 kilometers – no problem! “. We pushed ourselves and helped each other because we were one – not knowing one other but feeling the same for each other. The funny thing was my physical condition was great – I just couldn’t get my legs to carry me forwards…

I don’t know how often I wanted to quit but I couldn’t have any way.  I wanted to do it once and I didn’t want to invest all the time for the training again, no way – so, get on with it.

I fought and I fought and I fought against the pain and against myself and then there was only 1 kilometre left to go – I wanted to show myself that I was still strong and actually ran the last one in 5 minutes. If I had gotten a cramp I would’ve just walked over the finish line. And then the clock stopped at 3:55:06.

Stingray congratulated me. I knelt down not comprehending what I had achieved. I didn’t want to talk or say anything – I just wanted to be alone. I made it. I couldn’t hide the tears of joy, exhaustion and pain but I didn’t care at all.

I had just left 42,195 km behind me. A distance you can only understand if you ever run it yourself. A distance that most of us will never run anyway. 5, 10 or even 21 km are truly peanuts compared to a marathon. And that’s why I take my hat off to anyone who achieves that distance – no matter if it takes him 2 or 6 hours.

I will never forget that race. I also know that this was my first and last marathon - ever.

Well, that’s what I actually did think until Sunday July 29th 2007...