Misery may love company, but Joachim Hübner prefers to think of his challenge to colleagues to join him in running the Berlin Marathon this month as an “inspiration.”
The 53-year-old Hübner, a member of Commerzbank’s regional managing board, set one condition: Those accepting the challenge must be running their first marathon.
It was while preparing for his own first marathon, in Frankfurt, last year that Hübner decided that his co-workers needed to discover the joy of running. “When I was training I felt so clearheaded, regardless of how my day went,” he says. “I thought others should experience this too.”
Within three days of Hübner’s issuing his challenge, which he posted online, 300 Commerzbank employees had signed up to wear the company’s logo in the September 25 race. Hübner accepted the first 55 and put the next ten on a waiting list.
Commerzbank, Germany’s third-largest bank, will cover the costs of the runners’ registration fees, hotels rooms and electronic time chips (tags that are tied into a runner’s shoelaces and used to record start and finish times), as well as a carb-loading pasta party at the bank’s Brandenburg Gate office the night before the 42.2 kilometer (26.2 mile) run -- when everyone is still optimistic and on speaking terms with their mentor.
