It’s their only and last chance. Katharina Steinruck wants to be at the starting line for the women’s marathon in Osaka on January 28th. The Frankfurt Eintracht long-distance specialist will then know exactly what time she has to run in order to get her ticket to the Olympic Games in Paris in the summer. The qualification period ends three days later, after which there is no further opportunity to recommend yourself for the annual highlight.
“You no longer have to tremble and fear,” says the 34-year-old, emphasizing the advantages of this pressure-filled situation. But she would have preferred a different route to the big event. Steinruck originally wanted to beat the standard of 2:26:50 hours in Nagoya last spring. But due to an inflammation of the maxillary sinus, the 2022 European team champion had to cancel the trip to Japan. The diagnosis was that the illness was a delayed consequence of a corona infection that had laid the whole family flat over the Christmas holidays in 2022. It was to be the beginning of a long period of suffering for the experienced athlete. After apparently recovering, she remained only 14 seconds above her best time at the Easter run in Paderborn over ten kilometers in 32:07 minutes.
System was not OK
In all the races after that, things didn’t go 100 percent. “There were always reasons for it,” says Steinruck, such as the stormy conditions at the half marathon in Istanbul. “That’s why we haven’t paid much attention to it yet.” But at a training camp in Livigno, Italy, in the summer, she felt “fixed and ready” after longer runs. It always took her two to three days to recover, says Steinruck. In addition, her pulse was significantly increased. She talked to Theresia Weigel, the wife of national walking coach Ronald Weigel, about the difficult-to-explain problems. The pharmacist, who works in competitive sports, carried out tests with the Hessian, which indicated “that my system was not OK”.
Further examinations at home revealed extensive deficiencies: in vitamins, minerals, amino acids and trace elements. “I just slept, ate, trained and otherwise didn’t feel like doing anything,” says Steinruck. She sweated extremely and felt under tension all day long, “like before an exam, but from the time she got up until she went to bed.” After a new check in Stuttgart there were further findings. The mitochondria, the energy suppliers in the cells, “were completely down,” reports Steinruck. The antibodies were “permanently in defense mode” because the coronavirus was still active and the proteins that are released during an infection had not yet been broken down. Certain metabolisms didn’t work. A “bang cure”, a replenishment of the reserves through high doses, was supposed to help, intensive training was canceled.
