A man from Luxembourg City who completed his first marathon on Saturday broke a record when he managed to recount the feat in only two hours and 16 minutes.
Markus Trapp, 38, had been preparing for the ING Night Marathon for nearly 20 weeks, during which he kept the entire office informed about every mundane detail of his training program.
“I knew that when Monday morning rolled around, we’d all be stuck listening to Markus tell us about doing the marathon,” said colleague Ana Neves, 29. “I was sure it would take him three or four hours, which is normal for most first-time marathoners who see themselves as Neil Armstrong back from the moon.”
“It once took him an hour just to finish a story about hurting his knee in 2014,” she added.
Sophie Bragt, who shares an office with Trapp, says she was so certain it would take Trapp the whole day to finish his story that she cancelled all of her meetings and created an out-of-office reply on Outlook.
When Trapp showed up on Monday morning with a box of 24 donuts and announced he was going to give a PowerPoint presentation about his experience, Bragt called her husband.
“I told [Johan] I was going to be home late, and that he’d better plan on picking up the kids from the creche,” she said.
Neves, Bragt, and 11 other colleagues were then convened to hear the story, but to their tremendous delight, Trapp finished in just over two hours. When he breathlessly arrived at the finish, he was met with applause.
“I prepared so much for this by already telling everyone about my training program, choice of running shoes, blackened toenails, and my need to put tape over my nipples, so all that was left to recount was the actual 42-kilometer run,” Trapp explained. “I left out certain details, such as how at kilometer 16 I almost slipped on an orange peel, and that’s how I managed to keep my story time so low.”
