published on 23/07/26
In a vacuum, photons travel almost 300,000 kilometers per second. At this year’s B2Run in Munich, our team from Unterschleißheim settled for something closer to 11km/h and still gave it everything they had over the full course.
More than 30,000 runners took over the city that evening, and the finish line sat inside the Olympic Area, a longer walk from the parking lot than most of us expected. The participants had run the course once before, last year, in the rain.
I remember running in the rain and thinking, why am I doing this again. Then after the finishing line you know why.
Last year’s weather didn’t repeat itself this time. It probably wouldn’t have mattered either way. Some dates just don’t get skipped.
“We are laser” has been our line for a while now, and on most days it describes someone bent over an optical bench, running the same alignment check a second time because the first result looked half a degree off. Steady hands. People catching what someone else missed. Marcus Gögelein, CTO at IMM Photonics put it differently after crossing the finish line.
You spend the whole run next to someone from a different company, and by kilometer four you’ve talked about everything except work. Next day you’re back in the office, and it’s just easier to call someone when you’ve already spent an evening jogging next to him.
Nobody set a personal record, as far as we know. That was never really what the evening was for.
Thanks to everyone who ran with us this year. In the lab and on the course, the pace holds better when there’s a team around you to hold it with. See you at the next one.