Running a Marathon in Every EU Capital

EU Marathons

Next to experiencing a lot of endurance sports events, my goal has initially been to complete a marathon in every capital city of a EU member country. After seven years, I succeeded in this. See this overview.

Who?

Most of the people I like call me Teesche, but my official name is Tim Teege. I was born in 1984 in Hamburg, Germany. I have lived in Darmstadt, Munich and Saarbrücken as well, but decided to settle in Hamburg, because it’s a good city. Here I live with my amazing wife Sophie and our four sweet little daughters.

I earn money by being the founder and CEO of a web design company called teege.me GmbH, as well as a sports nutrition company named runrunrunFood UG, which primarily sells a great, honey-based powergel for endurance athletes, HoneyPower.

In the free time that’s left, I like to play music on the guitar, piano, and especially on the drums recently.

Why Did I Want to Run a Marathon in Every EU Capital?

The reason is quite simple. Because it is possible!

After a very unmotivated phase of my life I began to think about creating a kind of bucket list of things that I want to experience in my life. The result was a long document that grows a lot faster than I can cross off items. The list is more than 20 items strong.

Some goals can easily be accomplished via the popular strategy of using money, like for example doing a long vacation in the South Pacific or a biking tour along the Way of St. James. Others are relatively intense like crossing the English Channel swimming or completing an Ironman distance triathlon.

For some reason, many items on my list are of athletic nature, although I wouldn’t call myself an athletic person. After a childhood of experiments with tennis and field hockey my athletic career was kept down by my huge laziness. Eventually, during university, I tried some outdoor running and that stuck with me. When I entered adulthood by having a real job in a real office, the urge to go running in my free time grew even more. I did around 30 kilometers per week and at some point I found myself registered for the Hamburg marathon, together with my co-worker Kristian.

That was the end of my laziness. What followed was a biking tour from Hamburg to Athens, Greece (about 1,200 kilometers in three weeks, including crossing the Alps from Munich to Venice), my first Olympic distance triathlon in Hamburg (1.5 kilometers swimming, 40 kilometers biking, and 10 kilometers of running), as well as lots of halfmarathons and 10k’s in Hamburg and the vicinity with improving results.

It became clear to me that running will stay with me for a long time. I consider it being a very elegant sport, because:

• no special skills or technique is necessary
• there is no need for expensive equipment
• also no silly club memberships

You can just go out and run. Everything you need is already there. Just a bit of practice that additionally makes your whole body stay in shape. Best sport ever!

In 2010 I finished my first ever full marathon in Hamburg, just to experience what it’s like. After 25 years without a real sport I was prepared in a disastrous and naïve way and I finished in 4:51:30. It was one of the best moments of my life.

I remember it like it was yesterday how I wobbled for the last eight kilometers, half walking and half trying to jog, always thinking about quitting but still fighting. At kilometer 41 my then-girlfriend Sophie (now she is my wife) jumped out of the crowd onto the course and ran along with me until shortly before the finish line where she was taken out of the race by the security guards.

That gave me enough energy to run for the last few hundred meters to the finish, my head held back because my neck muscles were so sore, my body leaning forward and my mind completely focused on not falling down and instead putting one foot in front of the other one, until finally I heard the beeping sound of the chip tracking machines and the clicking of the photographers that confirmed I finished the race.

A nice lady handed me my medal and there I was, with my victory against myself. I cried a few tears of joy. My feet felt long and flat and were full of sore spots and blisters. I got a black toenail. My whole body was aching and there wasn’t one muscle that didn’t feel sore. I was very hungry, tired, but extremely happy. My sister picked me up and drove me home.

The first thing I did back home was google more marathons.

But I did not just want to run any random marathons, I prefered to have a concept behind it. I just found out how happy it makes me to have a huge goal and fight real hard until I finally manage to reach that goal, so naturally I wanted to set new and bigger goals immediately. I got the idea of running a marathon in every EU capital for no particular reason except that I love Europe and the idea of different kinds of peoples coming together to cooperate with each other’s best interests in mind, as opposed to exploit and kill everyone else like humankind has done over and over again.

One worldwide people with a common idea of sharing Earth and keeping each other alive. In my mind, this starts here in Europe – we’re the guinea pigs it gets tested on. It’s clearly not always easy to follow through on this huge political vision, but in my opinion nothing worth having comes easily.

Just like with running a marathon, you have to put in a lot of work until great things happen. But apart from this point of raising awareness I didn’t do it to achieve some world records or anything, it’s also just that I like to travel and get to know new places.

Throughout these years I’ve met many great people through this marathon blog. So if you’re thinking about talking to me, feel free to send me an e-mail!