Six Years of Struggle for Three Hours of Glory
My Messy Sub-3 Marathon Saga
The idea of running a marathon in under 3 hours has inspired me ever since I started running. Next to "just finishing" and the 4-hour barrier, it is the biggest goal for any ambitious amateur runner and the biggest motivation to train for a marathon in the first place.
But why are we so in love with these particular time limits? After all, they're just numbers, and a 3:03 marathon is, from a purely athletic standpoint, exactly the same as a 2:57 marathon. So why should we wholeheartedly commit to such an artificial goal?
Well, I can't speak for all runners, but I can tell you why the sub-3 marathon is so important to me. Here's my not-so-short marathon goal story.
The Marathon and Me – The Early Years
The marathon and I got off to a good start in Rome in 2015. I was well prepared and was graciously rewarded with a great finishing time of 3:31:47.
“Not bad for a first marathon!”
That’s what people told me.
That same year, I learned some painful but important lessons at the Hamburg Marathon. True to the motto: twice the pain, half the fun and a worse time on top. Maybe it was because there were only 4 weeks between Rome and Hamburg. I'm telling you, important lessons.
In the spirit of "the more, the merrier", I immediately set my sights on the next marathon in the same year. Not very clever, but somehow I had fun with this hau-drauf-method. I managed to improve my PB by another 4 minutes to 3:27:44, but to be honest, I had no idea what I was doing.
Without listing every single marathon I ran in those early years - I think there were 2 or 3 more - let's jump to the one that changed everything for me: Berlin 2017.
The Point of No Return – Berlin Marathon 2017
I was young, in love, and training like a goddamn idiot. I had as much trouble deciding between the mountains and the road as I did between my old life and a wonderful future with my now-wife that was within my grasp until it almost wasn't.
Nonetheless, I finished in an impressive (to me at least) time of 3:05:31. I ran with all my heart and without thinking about anything. Maybe it was because two weeks before the Berlin Marathon I had finally made the urgently pending and most important decision of my life. Maybe.
Sascha Kowalski, if you are reading this: Lisa and I are together.
However, there was a downside to my thoroughly enjoyable marathon time. Everyone, and I mean everyone, around me was suddenly talking about how my next marathon was going to be a sub-3. In fact, it had to be a sub-3 marathon.
Of course, I had already toyed with the idea of setting that goal for myself, but the pressure from outside became immense. From zero to one hundred.
Fortunately, I was in good coaching hands at the time and had someone at my side who could explain to me how to tackle this project.
Unfortunately, my coach was also firmly convinced that all I had to do was go to the start line and the sub-3 marathon would be in the bag.
You can imagine the rest of the story.
Sub-3 – First Attempt (Hamburg 2018)
I had completed a rigorous 13-week marathon prep like a pro and thought I was ready to run the sub-3 in Hamburg in April 2018. What I didn't know was that I had mercilessly and consistently overtrained out of sheer overestimation of myself, and had hardly done any of the sessions as I should have. I ran every single workout faster and longer than I was supposed to. I also thought that getting food poisoning 3 days before the race was "no big deal" and that everything would be fine on race day.
I ended up at the start line completely overtrained and fatigued, wondering why everything suddenly felt three times as hard as it had in training. The end of the story was that I dropped out of the race just before the half-marathon mark when I realized that I would not be able to maintain the necessary pace of 4:15 min/km. Of all the bad decisions I made regarding the Hamburg Marathon, this was by far the worst. And also the most far-reaching.
But before I could make another attempt, I rattled myself into a runner's burnout by mindlessly doing what I was doing. Too much, too soon. Good job!
That's a whole other story, so I'll keep it short. Anyway, I saw that the only way out of my self-created running misery was to just consistently do what I wanted to do. That worked pretty well for a while, I even participated in a triathlon, but in October 2018, I was back at the starting line of yet another marathon. In Cologne.
Instead of properly analyzing my Hamburg training cycle and learning from my mistakes, I did the exact opposite and trained even more excessively and recklessly. The only positive thing about it was that I was doing it because I enjoyed it and not because I was chasing the sub-3 marathon. Not this time. I really ran for fun. The whole endeavor was pretty questionable, though.
I still don't understand how the 3:03:23 at the Cologne Marathon came about. After all, at KM 34, I burst harder than I have ever burst in my life, but it was probably the closest thing to a real "punk run" since Berlin 2017.
I gratefully accepted the new PB and continued to train like an asshole.
True Feelings
With the shambles I had left behind in my training and running life, the outside expectations that I had to run under 3 hours slowly disappeared. At the same time, an almost romantic notion grew inside me of the big day when I would finally succeed. It was a mixture of athletic ambition, a levelheaded love of numbers, and a desire to get my running back on track. The sub-3 marathon became my true north, a beacon of sanity that would guide me from then on. It had become MY goal and no longer one that was brought to me from the outside. At least, that's how it felt.
Sub-3 – Second Attempt (Berlin 2019)
New coach, new luck! For my second attempt at running a sub-3 hour marathon, I wanted to play it safe and asked an absolute expert in the field to write me a training plan for a tight but safe 2:59:59. I believed in the plan and wanted to and did follow it meticulously.
The training was much easier than what I had done the months before, which irritated me at first. But I did what a good athlete does, and that is to trust the coach and the process.
From today's perspective, I would say that I was well prepared at the start line of the 2019 Berlin Marathon. The reason I dropped out of my second sub-3 attempt, just as I did in my first, shortly after the half-marathon mark, was not to be found in my training.
If I had to boil it down to one simple truth, it would be that I didn't have a plan B. Or to be more precise: I had a plan B, but I wasn't interested in it. Plan B would have been to finish the marathon, enjoy a decent finish time, and build on the experience. Instead, I threw in the towel the moment it became clear that I wasn't going to break 3 hours today. Just like my first attempt in Hamburg.
5 years later, I consider that decision premature and short-sighted. And somehow a bit dishonorable.
The End. The End?
That was it. My second sub-3 attempt would also be my last. I continued to run marathons, but none of them had an ambitious goal, let alone decent preparation.
Then came Covid-19, the 100 km CCC and my first 100-mile race and biggest running project of my life, the Western States Endurance Run. My heart continued to beat for the marathon, but I didn't get a real chance to run it again for a long time. But that didn't change the fact that I was constantly thinking about running the marathon in under 3 hours.
But even my marathon preparation in the spring of 2023, which unfortunately ended in injury instead of the starting line, and the Valencia Marathon in late 2023 were never intended as sub-3 attempts. I knew I was fit and fast, but my gut told me that I needed to emotionally reconnect with the sport of marathon running before I could tackle "the big goal" again.
Maybe the reconnecting thing is precisely what happened in Valencia. It was a great experience and my third-fastest marathon with a time of 3:07:35. This race left me with enough confidence and new knowledge that I would have dared to go for the 3 hours again in my next marathon attempt.
But only 6 weeks later things took a different twist:
Acknowledgments
The following people have accompanied and influenced me on my sub-3 journey. I intentionally do not go into detail about each role because each of them made an immensely important contribution. Rodgau is thanks to all of you.
Lisa Mehl
Chris Drüke
Sascha Kowalski
Gunther Zehetleitner
Martin Grüning
Sonni Von Opel
Henning Lenertz
Karim Ramadan
Peter Greif (R.I.P.)
Everything not Running
I collect all my Das Z Letters in a digital folder in my writing program Ulysses. Ulysses has numerous great features. One of the great things it does is display how many characters or words a text or collection of texts contains. In the case of the collected Das Z Letters, there are now so many that I could fill two "Runhundred" books with them.
When I found this out, I was both surprised and delighted. I would never have thought that so much text would accumulate in just under a year. Beautiful text. I have a close relationship with each and every Das Z Letter. I notice this every time I pull out an older one, for example, to link to it. Then I briefly skim the text and am immediately thrown back to the subject or time. It's like looking at old pictures.
I'm glad that I chose this way to document my running life and share it with the world. More than that, to connect with the world. The Das Z Letter was certainly one of the better ideas of my life.
It’s strange how we gravitate toward these round numbers, but I suppose even when we are simply out for a walk in the woods, it’s instinctual to pick a significant looking landmark to navigate toward. I would have sworn that I’d never try for sun-three again, that I was resigned to that all being in the past and enjoying just running for its own sake. But you can’t shake it…