Florian
Neuschwander
Germany
·
Ultrarunning
Date of birth | 1 June 1981 |
|---|---|
Place of birth | Neunkirchen in Saarland, Germany |
Age | 44 |
Nationality | Germany |
Career start | 1996 |
Disciplines | Ultrarunning |
Florian Neuschwander loves running with every fibre of his 167cm-tall being. "For me, the distance or the terrain or whatever doesn't matter," he says. "The main thing is running!"
His first official race saw the then-15-year-old compete with no training and in tennis shoes. "That 2km and the time I ran it in showed me that I had something going." Since then, the routes he’s been running have been getting progressively longer and rockier.
In both 2015 and 2016 Neuschwander was the national men's Wings for Life World Run champion in Germany, covering 75.5km and 63.66km respectively. Between the two he travelled to the US and conquered Colorado's prestigious Transrockies Run – an ultrarun covering 200km and 6,000m of altitude in six days.
"Wings for Life World Run was a unique experience for me. The fact that you're chased by a car and that it's for a good cause – that's my thing," says Neuschwander, who loves nothing more than variety in his running. "Actually, I just wanted to go full-throttle on the first of the six stages," he says of his surprise success at the Transrockies Run. "After I won that by a large margin, I thought, 'Perhaps there's something more in this,'" In the end, he finished 26 minutes ahead of the runner-up.
It's exactly this approach and his motto ‘run with the flow’ that separate Neuschwander from other long-distance runners. "If I feel good, I just blast it," he says. "Then it's fun and I carry on." This is why many people see him as a pioneer of a new generation for whom running is a way of life and an adventure sport.