A trip down memory lane

Found these organizing old photos.

The picture above is from my first official marathon, Helsinki City Marathon 1985. 3:24.

This is my finish in Hawaii Ironman Triathlon World Championship in 1988. 11:19 was my PR (so far) so I was happy. It was an awesome experience to be able to train for three weeks and then compete on the Big Island.

Those were the times when everyone was trying to train like Dave Scott, Scott Tinley and Scott Molina. I trained every day, because it seemed that's what everyone else were doing. A week before the race I climbed Mauna Kea and suffered from bad dehydration. Still I kept on training every day. On the night before the race I saw Dave Scott running down the street, so I went out for an easy jog. I had no idea that The Man wouldn't be starting in the morning because of an leg injury.

Challenge Roth is one of the biggest 140.6-mile triathlons in Europe. It's certainly a fast course. I've finished iot three times. In 1990 I finished with a 3:19 marathon (see photo above), which is my fastest ever in a triathlon. Also the 56-minute swim in the same race is still my best long distance performance.

In 1995 I spent the summer in Switzerland, training in the Alps every day and often racing in berglaufs during weekends.

The photo above is from the Swiss Alpine marathon 1995. It was officially a 67K course. They say it was really closer to 72 km. My finish time was 7:29. I was happy to finish it at all, as I had injured my leg in a fall during one of the training runs.

Nowadays the Swiss Alpine K78 course is 78.5 km.

My longest running competition so far is Comrades Marathon, the famous ultra road race in South Africa. With well over ten thousand competitors and live TV coverage, it's a huge event.

In 1996 the distance on the uphill route from Durban to Pietermaritzburg was 86.7K (53.9 miles), which I covered in 9:30.