One More Thing: What 2025 Also Gave Me
Looking back at the good that slipped through
Hey everyone,
My first 2025 recap landed on the heavier side. Much heavier than planned.
I did what I always do: I scrolled back through the year’s archive and looked at what I wrote about. If something made it into a Das Z Letter, it must have been important, right? Injury. Identity. Fear. Doubt. All the big themes.
But my lens obviously had a blind spot. I missed the simple, bright, uncomplicated things. Short: the good things.
2025 wasn’t all bad. Far from it. So this is the add-on. The recap overtime.
The part where I talk about everything that went right.
Surgery, done right
Let’s start with something we usually only mention in passing: The surgery went well.
That is not guaranteed. No matter how good the surgeon is, how modern the clinic looks, there is always a roll of the dice involved when someone cuts into your knee.
This time, the dice were kind.
No complications. No horror story. I could fully load the leg again within days. Rehab unfolded like a textbook: boring, structured, effective. By the end of January I wasn’t just back in the running game. I was also hungry. Not cautiously optimistic. Hungry. Especially for racing.
That alone could have been the headline of the year. I just didn’t give it enough credit at the time.
One of the best training blocks I’ve ever had
Every race starts long before the start line. Karim — my coach, my calm voice of reason — built me a plan that didn’t look like much on paper. Lots of easy running. Some moderate efforts. Almost no classic “hero” sessions. Hardly any long runs that would impress anyone on Strava. No brutal tempo blocks to brag about. It was… subtle.
But the gears meshed. Week after week, something clicked. I got fitter, then faster, then more durable. Toward the end of the block I was running 1000m intervals in 3:30 min/km (please read my “Your Slow is My Fast” disclaimer. Thanks), and cruising through three-hour mountain runs with pressure on the system but no signs of fatigue.
To keep it simple: I felt ready. Ready for races, ready for risk, ready for the season I’d been dreaming about while riding my bike months before.
That feeling is rare. I want to remember it.
Racing season 2025: The fun part
Not every race I ran in 2025 was strictly necessary. But every single one was fun.
I lined up at two vertical races. Well, actually it was three by the end of the year. I ran a trail half-marathon that ended up being the fastest of my life. I toed the line at two ultras, one of them the ZUT 100K. Has its own highlight section, see below.
If you only read the “injury” part of the story, it’s easy to forget this: I had a real, full-on racing season. I stood in start corrals, heard countdowns, sprinted out too fast, found my rhythm, died a little, then a little more, resurrected a little, and crossed finish lines with that strange mix of emptiness and fullness you only get from racing.
Whatever came after, nobody can take that away.
ZUT 100K: a race for the ages
And then there was ZUT aka Zugspitz Ultratrail.
A hundred kilometers and 5,400 meters of vert around the Zugspitze. Pitch black night, heat, dust, deafening crowds, quiet single trails, epic mountain tops. The kind of day you cannot compress into a single sentence.
By the time I got to that start line, we already knew my knee was shot. We had removed downhill running from the training plan for the last three weeks. I knew I’d have to pay a price. I also knew I wanted this race, badly. For many reasons, beyond the fact that it was to be my Western States Qualifier.
The race was everything at once: Calm. Brutal. Gentle. Emotional. Precise. Chaotic. There were long stretches of flow where I lost track of time and distance, and others where I had to negotiate for every step.
Excellent timing: My friend Stephan was out there shooting a ZUT documentary for Willpower and I ended up being part of it. It’s a strange, beautiful feeling to have one of your most intense race days captured like that. A race for the ages, on film and in my head.
For all the damage it probably did to my knee: ZUT 2025 is a forever race.
I wouldn’t erase it.
A voluntary off-season
After ZUT, I didn’t crash into the off-season. I walked into it.
I knew 107 kilometers hadn’t magically healed anything. I knew I would have to stop, again. But I wasn’t bitter when I made that decision. I was full.
In the first six months of 2025, I had lived almost the entire emotional spectrum of running:
Nervous first races back
Big mountain days
Pain, fear, joy, belonging
Start lines, finish lines, the magic in-between
It was enough.
I started my self-imposed off-season with a surprising sense of peace. I still draw from that feeling now. In harder moments I replay those six months in my head and remember: if I never have another season quite like that, I still had this one.
Everything that wasn’t running
2025 was also a good year for my running brand Willpower.
I had promised myself to do less (fewer drops, fewer projects) but make everything I do feel like a full yes. That plan worked.
In spring, I released a 1990s hardcore inspired drop that plugged me straight back into my youth. We even made a fanzine for it — cut and paste, rough edges, real paper.
In summer, we updated the Force Majeure and Beyond collections with a set of images that felt like the purest translation of what both lines stand for. The photos finally matched the feeling.
Then came the return of the Route of Samsara collection, a personal favorite that feels deeply tied to who I am and why I run.
And in autumn, Bold Friday exceeded everything Willpower has done so far — not just in numbers, but in intensity and connection.
More important than any drop was the circle around it. Speaking of a circle… The Willpower Circle grew tighter. A meet-up at ZUT. A simple WhatsApp community that turned into something much bigger: daily check-ins, mutual support and open exchange. It made one thing crystal clear: Willpower isn’t really about cool shirts (although they are pretty cool). It’s about the people who see themselves in them.
Making running possible for someone else
The absolute highlight of my year was not something I did. It was something I helped someone else do.
Supporting Juliane at Tor des Géants (TOR), together with my wife Lisa, was one of the most intense running experiences of my life. And I didn’t even wear a bib. Instead, I drove a campervan, managed logistics, cooked food, obsessively watched the race tracker and tried to be calm when everything felt frayed.
TOR stitched the three of us together in a way that reminded me of my Western States crew years earlier. There is a special kind of bond that forms when you go through something unreal as a group.
I don’t know many other things in life that can connect people that deeply, that fast. And also standing at aid stations instead of start lines taught me something important: The biggest privilege is not to run the race, but to help someone you care about finish theirs.
This experience has also connected me closely to the TOR and the Aosta Valley. Not a day goes by without me thinking about this race at least once. Even though I don’t think I could do it myself, my fascination remains unbroken. I haven’t felt this kind of enthusiasm in a long time. And it feels great.
And now?
Honestly? I’m still in between.
Hope and optimism show up. So do doubt and sadness. Sure, I do have a roadmap for my knee. Next appointments, next steps, next measures. The problem is the time in between those steps. That’s where it gets hard to stay positive.
That’s why I wanted to write this second part of the recap.
When I look back at everything good that happened in 2025, it gives me something solid to stand on. No matter whether it takes another month or another year until I can run the way I want again, this year is mine.
2025 is not just the year I got injured. It’s also the year I had a lot to be grateful for.
DANK-BAR-KEIT, as we say in German. Gratitude, but spelled out so you can see every piece of it.
Thanks for reading both sides of this story.
The path to inner balance shows itself at the end🤝
It is great brother to mention it the way looking back at the good that slipped through as often we reflect back or some sort of narration keeps going in our minds that this could have been better/ this wasn't right/ why this went wrong and other n number of things as well. But reflecting on the things that went our ways needs to be addressed as well.