June 17th, 2026 gave me the first very practical proof that all this running and strength training is not just a collection of numbers in Garmin and gym logs.

I had to collect porcelain tiles for the new apartment. The truck arrived, dropped the pallet, and left me with the actual work: twenty packages, around 30 kg each, 120 × 60 cm. Garage to elevator. Elevator to corridor. Corridor to apartment.

Annoying, but manageable.

Then I saw the 120 × 120 cm slabs. Eleven pieces. Around 50 kg each. Heavy, awkward, and with no civilized way to grip them. I tried to find someone I could pay to help. Nobody wanted to.

So I carried them myself.

For about 75 minutes, one slab after another. Each one was heavy. None of them was pleasant. But the strange part was that my stamina did not disappear. I could keep going. Not fast. Not elegantly. But consistently.

That was the functional benefit.

Not a better race prediction. Not a nicer chart. Not another abstract fitness score.

Capacity on demand.

After getting home, I slept for an hour. Then I still went to the gym and did a very hard strength session. That part surprised me more than it probably should have.

To keep the story honest: sleep that night was destroyed. The body clearly took a serious hit. Recovery always sends the invoice. Very polite of it. Very German.

But at 46, there is something deeply satisfying about knowing that when real work appears, the system holds.

Not heroic nonsense.

Just a body that can still do the job.

Second progressive test on the treadmill. Oxygen, lactate, heart rate, the ramp to failure.

It drove me into the ground.

I hit 195 and that was it. My legs got completely cut out from under me. Toward the top the technique fell apart, and at 18 km/h there was no hiding it. Both the friend filming me and the guy running the test pointed at the same thing: badly untechnical, no economy, power leaking everywhere.

The next day I had to sleep for an hour in the afternoon, which almost never happens to me. It took more out of me than I expected.

I am a little disappointed, because the heart rate climbed hard the whole way. That bothered me more than anything else during the test.

But there is the other side. At 18 km/h I held 45 seconds. Last time I did not get there. So on the top end, better.

Now I wait for the analysis. The oxygen, the zones, the lactate curve. The feeling is one thing. The numbers will say what actually happened.