Originally written in German. Translated to English by AI — please excuse any awkward phrasing.

My longest day of the year started early — the alarm went off just before 4am. I’d slept well and felt good; my legs were loose and I was mentally ready for the challenge ahead. A small breakfast and finally some coffee again, then get dressed and off we go. Together with Tobi, Caro, and Klaus-Peter, I headed to the shuttle bus that was supposed to take us to the lake.

At the stop came the first shock — there were already 200–250 people waiting, and no buses in sight for a long time. Frantic phone calls from a volunteer there didn’t exactly inspire calm either. Luckily we hadn’t been too well-behaved about queuing up at the front; when the first bus finally arrived, we were the first ones on. The ride itself went smoothly, so we got to the swim start around 6am. Pretty late — that left me just 45 minutes until my start.

I tried somehow to stay calm and not panic, which I didn’t really manage to do. After finishing all my prep and checks, I had 15 minutes left to get to the start and do a brief warm-up swim. A short while later the starting gun fired and we were off.

The swim was, compared to last year, very relaxed — nothing like the survival battle I’d experienced in 2010. I found my rhythm quickly, though a few hundred meters in I had a panic attack. I was right in the middle of a pack at the time, but nobody was touching me or kicking me, and there was plenty of space to the others. Still, I wanted out of the pack — memories from last year came flooding back and triggered the panic. I’d never experienced that before and didn’t really know how to deal with it in the moment. My first instinct was to veer hard left or right and swim to the outside. That wasn’t possible though — I would have had to fight my way through. So the only option was to keep calm and hope it would pass. Thankfully the panic disappeared just as quickly as it came, though it felt like an eternity in the moment.

The rest of the first swim lap went well — I was able to draft off other swimmers the whole time and save some energy. During the short run along shore after about 2.1km, I cut up both feet; the gravel there was pretty sharp. It was only briefly annoying and didn’t bother me for the rest of the race. The second lap also went fine, though I got pushed off course several times by strong waves and couldn’t find good drafting anymore. The second lap was therefore a bit more tiring, and I probably swam a few extra meters that weren’t necessary. I’m happy with my swim time of 1:00:23h, even though I was aiming to go sub-1 hour.

The first transition was okay. Given the weather forecast (5% chance of rain, 12–17°C), I put on an extra cycling jersey and arm warmers. In hindsight that was of course nowhere near enough — it neither warmed up nor stayed dry. Out of the 5 hours on the bike, about 4.5 were wet — strong, cold wind added to the misery. After just an hour I was completely frozen through, my legs were blue and I had goosebumps all over. It was only a matter of time before the wall would hit and my energy would run out. Fairly early in the race I had cramps in both legs — standing up to pedal or straightening my legs was impossible. After 2.5 hours of racing I seriously asked myself how you’re supposed to run a marathon in that kind of state…

On top of the conditions, there were mechanical issues too: that awful cobblestone section in Maintal caused my handlebar bottle cage to just dangle around, the lid on my tools box wouldn’t close anymore, and my spare tube worked itself loose from all the gaffer tape it was wrapped in. Why they put that section in the course is completely beyond me — it has absolutely no place there!!!

Those were the worst bike conditions of my career — I’d only experienced something similar in Roth 2008, but back then there was no wind. At times it was genuinely difficult to stay on the bike — the conditions were that rough. Or to put it another way: downhill at 25km/h on full power — great fun.

My bike split was 5:04:19h at the end — given the circumstances that’s not bad, but easily 15 minutes slower than I could have ridden in normal conditions.

I was rarely so relieved for the cycling to finally be over. In T2 I was handed the wrong bag first, so I had to go looking for my own. The transition itself went smoothly and I found my rhythm fairly quickly. Top priority was eating and drinking everything the aid stations had to offer — I wanted to get the cramps out of my legs as fast as possible.

Thankfully that worked reasonably well and my legs got better kilometer by kilometer. I found a good, fast rhythm quickly and was able to hold it for the entire 42 kilometers. Right at the start of the run I found out I was in 18th place in my age group — good news. Still, it was clear I needed to risk everything if I wanted to make the Hawaii qualification. So I set off at a 4:30/km pace, hoping to hold it as long as possible. During the run there were also frequent rain showers and fierce wind — I was freezing at times and wished I had warmer clothes. In the first one and a half laps I had to hold myself back a little to avoid blowing up — and got overtaken by plenty of people as a result. I knew at that point I’d see most of them again. And so it went: from lap three onward it was my turn, and I was able to pass a lot of people. Toward the end it got tough for me too, but I managed to hold the pace and ran the best marathon of my career so far: 3:09:20h — simply sensational, especially after what the bike had put me through. I’d secretly hoped it would be possible — actually pulling it off makes me genuinely proud.

So after the hardest day of my triathlon career so far, I crossed the finish line with a new personal best of 9:18:55h, completely spent and utterly exhausted. I’d improved on last year’s time by over 18 minutes, finishing 50th overall and 14th in my age group. The only bitter pill to swallow: the 13 seconds that kept me from qualifying for Hawaii…