Arne Gabius – will he make it or won’t he?
That is the question. Arne Gabius surprised everyone with a great performance last year. In two weeks, on October 25th, all eyes will be upon him.
So, will he achieve what he set out to do this year? After especially hard training units Arne sometime sat down and watched his finish of last year on Youtube. It’s pure motivation for his new qoal. “I’m sure the German record will fall.” It’s a record that hasn’t been broken since 1988 when Jörg Peter from Dresden set it. Arne must run 45 seconds faster than last year. He even imagines to finish with a time between 2:08 and 2:07 hours – if weather conditions allow it. This would mean the dawn of a new era in German running.
The organizers of the Frankfurt Marathon are keen to provide him with the best possible conditions. The put together an elite team of runners which will bring Arne up to speed. They plan to cover the first half in 63:30 minutes. According to the plan the pacemaker group should run a steady pace until kilometre 30. “From there to the finish line I expect it to be fast and fascinating”, says Arne Gabius. And who knows, it’s not out of the question that he will even win the entire marathon.
When Arne announced last year that he would finish between 2:12 and 2:10 hours it sounded like the claim of a madman. After all, here was a pretty successful 5000 and 10,000 meter runner on the track but with barely a few weeks of marathon training under his belt. So it was no surprise that after his stellar marathon performance people told him to quit the tracks immediately. But after 20 years Arne wasn’t willing to do that. He wanted one more season to say the track good-bye. At the beginning of the year he became new German record holder over 5000 meters indoors in 13:27,53 minutes. And he qualified for the 10,000 meters world championships in Beijing. That was his chance to end his track career on a high note. Arne, who has a medical degree, finished 17th.
Marathon training had already started weeks ago and he only took a three week break for Beijing. Now he was looking forward to his marathon adventure. Arne is powering through his training with units that seem impossible for normal runners. For example: three times 10 kms per week under 30 minutes each or running 45 kms in intervals. In some weeks Arne worked through 260 kilometres pushing his fat metabolism to the limits. During last year’s marathon, Arne says, he drank only “ten sips of water and three sips of Cola”. He has been a vegetarion for 20 years and recently banned potatoes, pasta and rice from his diet. He wants his body to “value carbohydrates as something special”. At the starting line he wants to be ready to go like a “fully fueled formula one race car” that keeps loosing weight during the race becoming even more efficient and “hopefully finish with the last drop of petrol in the Festhalle”. The reward will hopefully follow on the red carpet – or pretty soon after in Hawaii where he will marry his finance.
