Elite Marathon Training Series: Hendrik Pfeiffer – Balancing Training/Life & Favourite Training Locations
I’m not a technically a full time athlete, I study, but I’m lucky that my university offers me a lot of freedom. I can choose what I want to do and how fast I want to graduate, and that’s why university goes very well for me – I do very easy, but I do a job next to that – I work a big company in the corporate communication office throughout the week.
I think it’s important to not only focus on sports because I can see now how fast things can change, how fast an injury can let you die, and that’s why I also focus on the second prospective for me. I take my work seriously but of course priority is running for me. Sometimes I think oh, it would be better to only run because the Kenyans runners only run and they are the best in the world, but it’s not so easy in Germany. You have to get some money, and you have to keep a future because if you don’t become an olympic champion there’s no opportunity to live on running. That’s why I work 10 hours a week and complete a university degree.
You are off to Flagstaff in the coming months to train at high altitude. Why are you going to Flagstaff when there are cheaper, warmer options closer in Kenya, Morocco, etc?
I can compare because in 2015 I was in Kenya. I would say that people who prepare for track events, up to 10km, they should go to Flagstaff because it’s way more flat, you can run on flat roads, but in Kenya you can’t find a kilometre that would be flat and not hilly. It’s a different world. In Flagstaff there is civilization, you can go to the old town, to the club, there are a lot of possibilities to go out. In Kenya there is only the hotel and nothing that you can do around it. It’s very tough mentally, specially for people who do shorter distances. I’m a marathon runner, my strength is mentality. I can do the same stuff every day for weeks. Thats an ability you need to have while in Kenya.
Flagstaff has way more things to do – there’s a professional track. In Kenya it’s a dirt track where it’s like 408m a lap. In Flagstaff everything is organised. It’s different. You can choose between trails, roads, dirt roads and a stadium and in Kenya it’s only the dirt road and stadium and the dirt road around it. That’s extremely tough – I’ve never suffered so hard in my whole life and I think that made me strong for my marathon.
I prepared for the marathon in Kenya and I prepared for everything else in Flagstaff, and I think if I had to do a10km race last year after coming back from Kenya, it would have been bad, because it was impossible to do any speed workout, the altitude was higher than in Flagstaff, 300m higher at 2.4km altitude, and every day felt like dying. I ran 4:30/km pace – you have seen my usual pace doing long runs!
I went 4:30/km pace and I was dying, and in Flagstaff it’s way easier to keep your habits you know from Germany. You can do a long run in 3:40-3:50/km when you do that in Germany at 3:30/ km pace. In Kenya there’s a difference of one minute. That’s why this year I want to go to Flagstaff because I’m preparing for shorter distances – I want to improve in short distances because I’m weak at them. The upcoming year in 2018 I will go to Kenya again as will prepare for the Marathon European Championships. For marathon runners Kenya is the perfect place to be but for track events it’s Flagstaff.
Will you go back to Monte Gordo or anywhere else at sea level this year, outside of your home town?
I would like to, but I’m not sure yet. We are here now and we don’t want to go back to Germany because the weather there is terrible, -5 degrees celcius, it snows, it’s windy, and that’s something you obviously don’t want to have. Today I spoke to my coach and said that I don’t want to go back, let’s stay longer, but as I said I have to work and go to university, so it’s impossible. A friend of mine, from Russia who paced me for the Dusseldorf marathon, he doesn’t have to work and he decided to stay longer – this year it’s not possible for me but next year I hope it’s 100% running for me and I will do it the same way.
Hopefully I will stay 4 weeks because the running conditions are absolutely perfect, 15-20 degrees, no wind and always sunny. It’s way better to prepare tough workouts here than in the German cold. For me Monte Gordo has always been a very good place.
Who are your sponsors now, who supports you? What do they do for you more specifically and how do you benefit from them? I think I saw you somewhere with Nike, maybe talk a little bit about that and what you enjoy about what they give you and what are some of your favourite shoes or anything like that.
My most important sponsor is my home club TV Wattenscheid 01, because they are a strong club and they have the money to support their athletes, I get a good amount of money to survive and for me it’s a basic structure that I have a 2 year contract now to 2018 and for it’s the most important thing I have.
As I am a marathon runner I have maybe more opportunities than somebody that only does track events because marathon is extremely popular, in Germany we have big marathons like Berlin and Frankfurt, but there are also other good marathons like Cologne. I ran my national record in Cologne and then I spoke to the chair of Cologne marathon and now he is a good friend of mine and they gave the opportunity to represent the event as an ambassador and now I receive some help for being an ambassador and that’s not a lot of money but if you do a lot of things together it’s enough to survive, it’s enough to live well, but the problem for me is that after one or two years in which you do not perform well, everything will be gone and that’s something that track athlete commonly suffer from.
There’s no safety – the German federation doesn’t give us a lot of money. There’s a foundation that gives the top athletes some money, it’s called German Sports Help Aid and they support me with some money, but only if I perform. I had a good year with a 2:13 marathon but this year I’m coming back from an injury and I’m not sure if I will do such a performance again this year – I will do such performances again but it’s only possible if people support me during a bad year, and that’s a real problem I think for everybody.
I have Nike as a sponsor, but it’s quite impossible to get any money from Nike – I have to run sub 2:10 they told me to receive any money. I get some clothes and I’m thankful for that, but I think it’s not okay that there are football players who receive money in the millions and if it was more balanced, it would be easier for people like me to get to the top. That’s why I do a lot of small things and I do press work for my home club as I study journalism, it’s something I can do very well. I receive some money from that work, some money from being a Cologne marathon ambassador, I receive some money from my club, from the German federation, so it’s okay but it’s no safety. And that’s another reason why I want to work next to my running – I work at a corporate communications office and I think that’s the only thing that gives me safety because if I’m injured I can still work there and it’s something that’s in my hands. There are a lot of small things that taken together is enough, but I wish there was more safety and it is very hard to get a sponsor like Nike or Adidas that gives you more than only clothes.
It sounds like going under 2:10 is the game changer.
I asked them if they knew what it takes to go under 2:10 at the age of 23, they said “yes, but we have to look at international level” and on the international level there are only Africans and you don’t know if they are clean and that can be demotivating. But I cannot complain because I think I’m still better off than a lot of track runners.
We have a very good guy from Germany, Richard Ringer who ran 13:10 for the 5K and hardly anyone noticed it, nobody told about it in the media. That’s better for marathon runners – everybody wants to run a marathon in their life, no one says a 10km run or a 5km run is on their bucket list.
Where is your favourite place to train at sea level and at altitude? You’ve already spoken about Monte Gordo, Flagstaff and Kenya so it may be one of them, but if funding wasn’t an issue and you could spend a month somewhere at sea level and a month at altitude, where would you go?
It’s tough to say because it depends what I prepare for. I love every kind of training camp because you are with people that have the same hobby as you, that have the same goals as you, people like me. That’s why I enjoy training camps at Monte Gordo as much as at Flagstaff. It’s a different world, compared to Kenya where I felt like it was the worst time of my life, but when I came back to Germany I said it was pretty cool and awesome.
When I’m in Flagstaff I say I love this place and I want to stay here forever, now I’m in Monte Gordo and I say I want to stay here forever. I think you can say my favourite places are training camps no matter where, it’s the best time of the year – even better than the competition weekends. You are only surrounded by people who are like you and you can do funny things together, I think that’s awesome. You don’t have to go to university, you don’t have to go to work, you don’t have to be at a specific place – I enjoy it every time.
Thanks for sharing. Lastly, are there any other unique or individual training, diet or lifestyle methods you’d like to share that we haven’t covered?
One thing I could tell you, what I did before marathon preparation, something I experimented that was good for me as well, a training method – I used to link long runs with tempo runs. This is something I only did before the marathon and it was new for me and it worked out very very well, for example I did a 25K long run with fast pace of 3:28 and I finished at the track, I just changed my shoes and started a 5 x 1000m workout at 3:00 to 2:58, and that was very tough and I managed to do it and I think that’s exactly what gave me power during the marathon.
After a long run being tired and then doing some fast pace and I think that’s something to worth mentioning, because when I tell people about that, they say “oh I’ve never heard of somebody doing that” that worked out very well for me. I think for the next marathon preparation I will try things like that more often. As I said during that first marathon everything was an experiment, only one 40km run, second fastest was a 35km run and there was a 30km run. My mates who do the marathon they tell me about doing a 40km or even 45km run every week, and I’d say “not with me, I only did it once” and my second 40km run was a marathon where I finished in 2:13 – that might be different. I prefer doing 25km and doing some 1K repeats after that.
