Training with Martin Beckmann, almost

The best things in life are when a chain of co-incidences lead to something cool. So it happened this week.
As previously mentioned, I’m down in the south, i.e. in Stuttgart, southern Germany for some days. Of course are the running shoes an integral part of the travelling equipment. It’s week 3 in the count down to the Berlin Marathon and some training on the track would fit well into the program - as it did in every week up to now. So let’s find a track. What better tools are there as online maps with a satellite view. Fire up the web browser and as European I enter “maps.ovi.com” (you can also use the other one from the west coast, should work equally well). Scanning the area for something that looks like a 400m track, it feels like being a spy. There it is, about 5km west of the Stuttgart Airport, where my hotel is located. The track is in a little place called Leinfelden.

Had to check it out beforehand and ran over there two days ago. The route Ovi maps suggested, although selected “walk to” well it wasn’t a good one, perhaps they should have a “run to” option at some point, it might find all the good trails between acres and through residential areas. Anyway, I ran over there and met a couple of men fixing the football field, apparently a game on the following day. After a couple of faster interval runs one guy came over and said “you need to come on Thursdays, that’s when Martin Beckmann is training here”. “Martin, who?” I had no clue who that was. “Martin Beckmann, don’t you know him, he ran the Marathon for Germany in world championships just a couple of weeks ago and finished in the top 10 of European runners.” Hm, yes indeed there I’d have a worthy trainings partner. I defininteyl should come back on Thursday and do some 800m intervals.

Back home at the hotel, I checked out his world championship results and homepage. No bad, a personal best on the Marathon distance of 2:13h. Contacted him by email and asked if and when he’d be on the track. The reply came the next day. Unfortunatly no track training right now after the world championships. But he’d be around later in the evening, since his wife would do intervals. What a pitty, I had to train earlier in the evening that day. We didn’t meet. Would have been good to get some hints from a pro.

today’s training: 5 x 800m intervals in 2:37min, 16km altogether

Tags: Martin Beckmann, world championships