Aleksander Lingauer on the Confession Serious Runners Never Make — Identity, Ego, and What the Sport Really Costs You
THE RUNNING EFFECT PODCAST
Dominic Schlueter
4.9 • 821 Ratings
🗓️ 4 March 2026
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Aleksander Lingauer is back on the show, this time putting everything on the table.
Aleksander is an endurance athlete and writer, and the mind behind Project 61: a solo mission to run the length of Germany, one marathon a day, for two straight months. He's also crewed for Kim Gotthwald across two Last Man Standing victories.
And this year, BPN extended him an invitation of his own.
Aleksander is here to be honest and raw: about his nervous system shutting down on him. Not from one bad running session, but from weeks of training too hard, sleeping too little, and handling sudden public attention in ways he'll be the first to admit weren't healthy. What followed were tearful nights, empty churches, and one very raw conversation with himself on paper. He had to ask himself the question: what am I really doing this for?
This isn't a race preview.
It's an hour between two people talking honestly about ego, identity, faith, and what happens when the thing you've built your life around suddenly feels meaningless. Alexander reads aloud from a letter he wrote (Churches and Mirrors) and it stops feeling like a podcast entirely.
His closing words: if you can suffer honestly, you will win honestly.
Tap into the Aleksander Lingauer Special.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | What happens when the sport you love stops loving you back? |
| 0:06.0 | My guest today had his nervous system shut down mid-run, fell completely out of love with running, |
| 0:11.3 | cried his eyes out alone on New Year's Eve, and then accepted an invitation to one of the |
| 0:16.0 | hardest races in the world anyway. |
| 0:18.0 | This is Alexander Lingawa, and this might be the most honest conversation |
| 0:22.5 | we've ever had on this podcast. I've had Alex on the podcast once before, but today's conversation |
| 0:28.9 | reaches unseen levels of depth and vulnerability that I've never seen a guest illustrate. It's a |
| 0:35.8 | back and forth on the spiritual nature of running, on loving something and falling out of love with it and how you view that and what perspective you view it with. This one is deep. It's meaningful if you've ever loved or hated running. This conversation is for you. And if you enjoy it, share with a friend. This one is deeply impactful. So I want this one to be shared as much as seemingly possible. Give us a five-star of you if you appreciate my work and hit the follow button for more conversations like this in the future. Without further ado, enjoy this legendary, vulnerable, deep, impactful conversation with the man of the hour, Mr. APL. |
| 1:13.1 | Alexander Lingawa, |
| 1:15.2 | the merchant of death they could call him |
| 1:17.7 | because this man in a few months is about to see God. |
| 1:22.1 | What's been the hardest part of training for a race |
| 1:24.9 | that's not supposed to end? |
| 1:27.0 | Last Man Standing. Right off the bat with supposed to end. Last man standing. |
| 1:29.3 | Right off the bat with the big one. |
| 1:30.9 | I like it. |
| 1:32.5 | I don't know. |
| 1:33.3 | It's not a question I've really ever considered answering. |
| 1:38.9 | The training in its intricacies for the format is different in some ways, of course, |
| 1:45.2 | fueling strategies and such. |
| 1:48.2 | But I try my very best to approach running from a very spiritual perspective. |
| 1:54.5 | And through such, I am not oriented around, you know, working around the question, how do I outlast myself, |
... |
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