running shoe

I love wearing my Apple Watch. Not only does it tell me that I apparently lost the ability to stay in Zone 2 while running, it also tracks everything else, lets me quickly set timers, pause my podcast without fishing my iPhone out of my pocket, and gives me glanceable information about my life.

Unfortunately, it looks like shit. That’s why I invested quite some money (€40) and bought this very pretty Casio watch. I love it! It’s shiny and has much more of a visual opinion than the Apple Watch, which has looked basically the same for the last decade.

Sunday is long-run day. I love a good yap and run. Later that day, we were invited to Basti’s birthday party in the park. I didn’t know anyone except Anna and still had a fantastic time. Basti and all of his friends were great, and I really enjoyed what might have been the last picnic of the summer.

The hardest days are the ones when my run is the only usable material for my comic journal. It feels like there are only so many ways I can draw on it (pun intended) without repeating myself. This one was a close call, and I was glad I found a way to tie it to the sweltering heat that shaped the rest of the day.

Every time a long train ride is part of the itinerary, I pack my Switch 2. Every time, I pull it out for maybe ten minutes, if that, before it ends up shoved back into my backpack. You’d think I’d have learned by now and just leave it at home. But I’ll do exactly the same thing next time.

Marcel from four years ago would never have been able to go for a run after a day of travel. For one thing, I wasn’t running back then. For another, travel used to take so much out of me that I’d be completely spent.

But over the last couple of years, I’ve worked on my relationship with travel, and this run felt like one of the clearest signs of progress.

6x6 all-out sprints (30 sec) with 60 sec recovery. It’s fun!

I love winning battles against that inner voice telling me not to do hard things. It feels great.

Running intervals offers an interesting contrast. I never want to do them, even less than a classic run. But once I get going, they’re so much more fun. There’s something deeply life-affirming about sprinting through a forest. It feels almost primal.

Running alone and running with friends is like day and night. It’s so much more fun to yap while running for 12 kilometres.

The harbor’s birthday is a huge party, and people from all over Germany visit Hamburg to behave badly. It’s usually something people from Hamburg try to stay away from.

I actually had to take a nap later on. We even tried to stay in Zone 2, but it was harder than usual.

Running became fun again once I stopped winging it and went back to following a plan.

I actually had to go back to the popcorn person and switch mine, because they accidentally gave me salty popcorn too.

Who needs meteorology when my head forecasts the weather?