| Blog | https://www.teesche.com |
| Priorities | Four Daughters, Sports, Music |
| Work | Web Dev, Blogging |
| Location | Hamburg, Germany |
I’ve published a new blog post! It’s about how my friend Nico and I put together the 5th Munich Breweries Ultra in May. A 80k/50mi run through Munich to visit the 7 breweries and have a beer each. About 50 people joined us, it’s been great. Read it here:
CCC Blog Post and Podcast Episode are Published!
The Not-So-Little Sister Race of the Legendary Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc. Finally I made it to Chamonix to see what the fuss is about. The 101km (6,100m D+) race with all its extremes:
I remember exactly where I was. Twenty years ago, I was working in Hollywood. On my lunch break, I was at Philly’s Pizza on La Cienega and Olympic, reading The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene. In a chapter about the “divide-and-conquer” strategy, Robert writes about the Athenians’ legendary stand against a massive Persian invasion on the plains of Marathon in 490 B.C. After the battle in Marathon, the soldiers had to immediately race back to Athens where a second Persian fleet was on its way to take the city from the sea. “There was simply no time to rest,” Robert writes. “They ran, as fast as their feet could take them, loaded down in their heavy armor, impelled by the thought of the imminent dangers facing their families and fellow citizens…Within a matter of minutes after their arrival, the Persian fleet sailed into the bay to see a most unwelcome sight: thousands of Athenian soldiers, caked in dust and blood, standing shoulder to shoulder to fight the landing. The Persians rode at anchor for a few hours, then headed out to sea, returning home. Athens was saved.” Had the tired, dusty soldiers not run from Marathon to Athens, Robert writes, “history would have been altered irrevocably,” as the Persians, in conquering Greece, would have crushed the Athenians’ nascent democratic experiment that went on to shape the western world. Perhaps there would be no such thing as Western civilization. I had previously read about the Battle of Marathon in Herodotus’ Histories but this was so much more vivid, I actually understood what was happening and why it mattered. There in the pizza shop, I was struck by the way the same historical event could be transformed in the hands of a different storyteller. I remember being struck in particular by Robert’s line, “caked in dust and blood.” In any case, I emailed Robert and asked what he read when he was researching this famous event. He told me his sources, which included a book called The Greco-Persian Wars by Peter Green. I immediately ordered it on Amazon, and a few days later (Amazon was a little slower then), I began to read it on my lunch break. The screenwriter and director Brian Koppelman (Billions, Rounders, Ocean’s Thirteen) talks about “The Moment”—the critical moment in every aspiring artist’s life, when the craft they have long elevated as magic or beyond their grasp suddenly becomes a bit more comprehensible. My moment happened about forty pages into The Greco-Persian Wars, where Peter Green writes, “The reappearance of the Marathon warriors — grim, indomitable, caked with dust and sweat and dried blood — not only gave Datis pause for thought; it also, obviously, came as an unexpected shock to the Alcmaeonidae and the pro-Persian party.” It was here that I realized: Oh, this is how it works. This is what a researcher, a writer, a storyteller does: they read a collection of books on the same event, filtering the many details through their own lens based on their own tastes, which they then shape into their own style to make something new. The passage from The Greco-Persian Wars (top) that Robert Greene used in The 33 Strategies of War (bottom). It was a breakthrough moment for me. A little peek behind the curtain of the previously intimidating craft that I was drawn towards. A realization that on the other side of the books I admire and love is just another human being doing a job. And I’m a human being too, so maybe if I work hard enough, I can write books too. Now, there was nothing in either of the Green(e) books about the fact that one could still go to Greece and run the course the Athenian soldiers, caked in dust and blood, ran from Marathon to Athens. But not long after, I read what became another all-time favorite book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, in which Haruki Murakami writes about running “the original marathon course” all alone, not as part of “an official race.” Re-reading “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” I had been a runner for a long time, and the one thing you get asked all the time as a runner is, “Are you training for a marathon?” My answer was always, “No, this is the marathon.” That is, the day-to-dayness, the doing it for no reason other than because, is the real challenge I’m tackling. That’s how I thought about running basically from the moment I left organized sports as a kid. It’s, as Murakami talks about in one of my favorite passages in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, both exercise and a metaphor. “Running day after day,” he writes, “bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself. At least that’s why I’ve put in the effort day after day: to raise my own level. I’m no great runner, by any means. I’m at an ordinary—or perhaps more like mediocre—level. But that’s not the point. The point is whether or not I improved over yesterday. In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.” Combined with my longtime fascination with the way that ancient, original Marathon tipped the balance of history, Murakami’s quiet account of running it alone—not for a medal or a crowd, but simply to raise his own level—planted the idea of one day running it myself. It had been sitting in my mind for some fifteen years when my wife and I started planning a trip to Greece with our two boys this past summer. Along with bringing to life the places I’ve been reading about for years and years—Olympia, Ithaca, Delphi, Thermopylae, Mt. Olympus and more—finally, I was going to try to run from Marathon to Athens. After looking at a lot of the marathon training regimens out there, I didn’t have to change much. [...]
To all ultra runners and those interested in it, my new Tuscany Crossing 103K race report is here!
It’s in beautiful Italian scenery and one of the easier Western States 100 qualifiers! My blog post and podcast episode about the race:
"Guten Tag, wir rufen Sie an, um Ihnen mitzuteilen, dass Ihr Sohn seit langem die schulischen Abläufe erheblich stört, weil er Kindern Angst macht und sie weinen.“
"Entschuldigen Sie bitte, mein Sohn ist ist 69 und Vorsitzender der CDU."
"Gut, dann wissen Sie also, von wem wir reden."
(...)
James Brown
netzlehrer