Suddenly the legs become light and I break through the wall
I was in a worse form than last time 2023. And yet 90 out of a total of 16,980 seconds are damn little. They separate me from a new record at this year’s night marathon.
In retrospect, a certainty is good: much more would not have been in it. I reached the goal completely spent. There I did not sink to the ground immediately because I know the danger of this action. A warning example was waiting around the corner.
A young man lay on the ground and tried in vain to get up. His legs wandered, he stretched his arms in my direction and said something. I cannot remember the language, but only know that I smiled at him exhausted and thought: « Unfortunately, I can’t help you either. » After such a effort, it takes a while until the language recurs. The marathon is not only physically demanding.
My thoughts turned 180 degrees.
A saying says that you run the first 30 kilometers with your legs and the rest with your head. This switchover point is also known as the « wall » against which you run. Unfortunately, this time the wall came after 26 kilometers. An earlier time to ask yourself the question of why you actually do these agony. Actually, I wanted to keep that for later. If the chance of a new record is increasingly disappearing, it gets on your nerves.
You don’t hear chaos in your head at 120 decibels
Inside I had already resigned for a short time, then I surprised myself. Five kilometers before the end, I put headphones in my ears and turned the music out loud. From one moment to the other, the legs were light and my thoughts turned around 180 degrees.
From the life of the LW journalists
The “gazettchen” is an informal column in which the authors legally tell about their everyday experiences or even give an insight into their thoughts. This has a long tradition: On December 3, 1946, an opinion with the title « Today » appears for the first time at the top of the side left on the first local side in the « Luxemburger Word ». On January 13, 1971, the « Gazettchen », which has been extremely popular with readers, then became the « gazette », which has kept its Premium-Platz in Luxembourg’s top-class daily newspaper to this day and across all layout.
