Author: Trotzendorff

A man leans on his arm, revealing the agony of a headache.

A Hangover Called 2023

When it comes to run­ning, the years of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic were actu­al­ly pret­ty good for me. Not that I enjoyed the lock­downs, and I don’t want to down­play the suf­fer­ing of so many peo­ple and the con­se­quences. But when it comes to the flex­i­bil­i­ty of work and the rise of remote work, I have to say, all of that had a pos­i­tive impact on my train­ing. I could run more reg­u­lar­ly, be more flex­i­ble, and, as a result, more con­sis­tent. H owev­er, what fol­lowed in 2023 can only be described as a hang­over. Wak­ing up from the era of COVID was painful. I had set some goals for myself — a half marathon to start, a trail marathon, a cou­ple of small­er runs, and aim­ing to beat my per­son­al best time in Frank­furt. But I did­n’t man­age to com­plete a sin­gle one of these races. COVID itself, my Achilles ten­don, and a fall that strained the ten­don in my left arm all put a damper on my plans. While I can slow­ly start running …

A female runner is running on a path in the mountains amidst a yellow-green meadow.

Intuitive Running

I don’t want to run like this any­more. It’s not doing me any good. More than that: it’s jeop­ar­diz­ing my health. I’m jeop­ar­diz­ing my health. And my joy of run­ning is at risk too. I owe this real­iza­tion to a gad­get, not my own insight. But let’s start from the beginning.

A man is sitting in a grainfield practicing breathing techniques.

A method worth exploring?

It’s been a strange irony that I, lying in my bed, should stum­ble upon a book that deals so inti­mate­ly with the very thing that had brought me low. Covid had robbed me of my strength and left me short of breath, and yet it was in the midst of this strug­gle that I found dis­trac­tion and, yes, a tune up.

Program code is projected on a woman's face.

«Running is about finding joy in the journey»

In the world of run­ning, trends come and go, but some have the pow­er to shape the future of the sport. From the grow­ing focus on recov­ery and self-care to the con­tro­ver­sial debate around trail run­ning and mega events, there is no short­age of top­ics to explore. In this inter­view with Chat­G­PT*, a cut­t­ing-edge AI lan­guage mod­el, we delve into the lat­est trends and hot-but­­ton issues in run­ning, and dis­cuss the poten­tial impact of tech­nol­o­gy on per­for­mance opti­miza­tion. But beyond the data and ana­lyt­ics, we also touch on a more fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: what does it mean to find joy in run­ning, and how can we strike a bal­ance between the pur­suit of excel­lence and the intrin­sic val­ue of the sport? Join us on this thought-pro­­vok­ing jour­ney into the heart of run­ning, and dis­cov­er what the future might hold for this endur­ing passion.