Instead of the Australian East Coast, the Gold Coast Marathon 2020 took place worldwide as a virtual race. It was possible to run from 1 July to 2 August. Together with our team colleagues we took part in this attractive virtual running event for Geflügelhof Zapf. While at the beginning we only planned to start over a distance, Jonas and I were found in the results lists six times at the end.

At the beginning Jonas ran the 10 kilometre distance in 34:16 minutes. My five kilometres in 18:15 minutes, which I completed at Meadows in Edinburgh on this July day, put me in sixth place of all women.

While I did a 10-kilometre run in 38:30 minutes, which put me seventh, Jonas took on the marathon quite spontaneously. After a first half in 1:25 hours, he followed an even faster one in just under 1:20 hours. So he finished the 42,195 kilometres in 2:44:58 hours. Only five runners of all the nearly 1,000 marathon finishers were faster.

In order to finish in the results lists over all four distances, Jonas decided to run a slightly slower half marathon as well as a slower 5-kilometre run. His half-marathon in 1:23:32 hours meant a total of 35th place, and a 20-minute time over the five kilometres landed Jonas in the results list.

Even though the Gold Coast Marathon 2020 did not take place in Australia, the event certainly had its appeal. No wonder that around 12,000 runners from 71 countries took part and after five weeks the result lists showed around 25,000 performances.