Take some time to get to know how these twins stay on top of the competition and turned one inspirational moment into a successful career. Peak into their brains on how they over come imbalances and crush expectations.

Why did you start with Marathon? What do you love the most about it? What was your fondest moment?

Joey Kelly (german celebrity) convinced us to start running. In 2007 he did a presentation in our hometown. We thought we give it a try and have a look at what he has to say. We have never run before. We got so fascinated by how he was talking about running, that we thought running must be the coolest sport on earth. On this evening Joey said that if you want to change something, start now. We did that. The following day we went running for the first time.

What we love so much about running is you can do it at any time and wherever you want, cause you don’t really need anything. For us, it’s the best way to discover a foreign city or landscape. Running is a feeling of freedom.

The best moment of running is crossing the finish line in a marathon. Crossing that line after 42,195 km (26.2 mi) is like a cocktail of emotions, almost impossible to describe. A mixture of joy, euphoria, exhaustion, relief and luck.

How do you manage to compete on the highest level over a long period of time?

With the years we learned to better listen to our bodies, to interpret the signals correctly. Professional sport is always a tightrope walk. To find the perfect balance of loading and relaxation, we are constantly in touch with our coaches and physical therapist. Next, to the physical wellbeing, mental wellbeing is really important. Your mind decides whether you can deliver on race day or not. That’s why we meditate and do yoga on a daily base.

Do you think you have changed as an athlete over the years? Maybe related to the preparation or how to deal with setbacks?

Every experience we make has some kind of influence. We learned to see injuries as a hint that something got out of balance, instead of clarifying them as a setback. We are convinced that everything happens for a reason, even though we will understand it way later most of the times.  On top of that, we focus more on ourselves than before. We try to black out our surroundings. Expectations don’t pressure us anymore. We use them as motivation.

What advice would you give a young athlete?

Patience, discipline, humility, dedication and enthusiasm. If you have all that and you think, that marathon is the coolest distance ever, then you will be successful. You won’t see progress all the time, but you will always go forward. Sometimes it’s helpful to take a step back so that you are ready for change and therefore be able to take a bigger step forward later on.

Is it more likely that a successful racing strategy is related to experience of the runner?

We would advise everybody to prepare for a marathon with a training program. As a runner who just does it for fun, you can easily take a program out of a book or the Internet. For us, it’s really important to work super close to our coaches. Before a marathon, we talk through the racing strategy, for example how fast we can start the first half of the marathon. The more experience we have, the better the feeling for the strategy. It’s kind of scary but a good coach.

You travel a lot throughout the year. How do you manage to be away from home and do you miss friends and family?

Most of the times when we travel to a race it’s no longer than a week or a couple of days. Preseason is tougher because when We travel to countries like Kenya, Ethiopia and New Zealand, we are usually away for weeks or even months. It’s part of the job. That’s why we really appreciate the time after a big competition and spend it with family and friends. We are lucky that we can travel together most of the time.

Do you have time to discover the city or country after a race?

There isn’t much time after the competition to discover the country. The same in training camp during the preseason, cause we are focusing on training. On the flipside, you kind of get a good feeling for the country and the culture when you spend multiple weeks there and you get to know the people.

Have you ever experienced any setbacks? If so, how did you handle those?

Setbacks are part of professional sports. You have to accept that and find out what to change to make them happen less often. Both of us reached the point once, where we questioned if we want to keep doing this sport. It happened at different times in our careers. We believe it’s important to not to take everything for granted. We are still hungry for trophies and we believe that we are still able to improve and to run faster than ever before. As long as we have this feeling of enthusiasm and passion, we will keep running.

How did you manage to study and train at the same time?

When we started with our studies, we haven’t been running marathons. That’s why training didn’t occupy that much time. On top of that, we haven’t been as successful as we are now. Media work, training and other occupations didn’t happen that often. It became more and more over the years, so we decided to finish our bachelor and then take the risk to fully focus on running professionally. You can manage to run on a high level and work at the same time, but then there’s no time left for other projects. For us, it has been a dream to be a professional runner. It’s our life. 

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