The way to the Abitur requires perseverance and a lot of staying power – sometimes not only in a figurative sense. This coming Saturday, 15 students from the Lise-Meitner-Gymnasium in Unterhaching (LMGU) will start a half-marathon through the Perlacher Forest. How long they need for the 21 kilometers will be a decisive factor for the grade they receive in the project seminar on study and career orientation – in short: P-Seminar. And this grade is then included in the Abitur average of the twelfth graders.
So a lot of pressure on the shoulders of young people? At least with Elly Nolte there is no sign of it. “No, I’m not nervous,” says the 17-year-old, shaking her head. Especially since a half marathon is nothing new for the passionate swimmer: last year, she says, she ran the same distance in the Munich marathon. In addition, the 15 members of the project group prepared specifically for the race – as part of the “Half Marathon” P seminar. They not only set up a training plan and covered umpteen training kilometers; In addition, the students themselves organized the half marathon that they will run on Saturday – work that is also taken into account in the grading along with the time.
The idea for the unusual project seminar came from Erhard Schneider, a sports teacher at the LMGU since 2013, once an athlete himself, but on the sprint distance, and today a passionate jogger who does his rounds almost every day. “I thought to myself that you could do something other than cycling across the Alps,” says Schneider, referring to a popular P seminar in the field of sports. “Namely walking instead of cycling.” And so he offered the “Half Marathon” project seminar for the first time in 2019 – at that time the aim was for young people to run this distance in the Munich Marathon. However, this plan was thwarted by the pandemic. And when he was planning a new edition for this school year, Erhard Schneider expanded the seminar content. “I decided that the students should not only take part in a half marathon, but also organize the running event themselves,” says the sports teacher. “It’s better because it gives them more responsibilities.”
If you want to achieve the best mark, you have to run under 1:40, girls under 1:50
At the beginning, the young people were divided into working groups, says Elly Nolte: on the topics of schedule, sponsoring, catering, certificates and route planning. The latter needed two attempts because her teacher was not satisfied with the initial route. “We walked the route and noticed that there were too many roots in the ground,” says Elly Nolte. Therefore, the working group had to measure a second route, which was then found to be good. In addition, the high school students solicited sponsors for their half marathon, engaged trail staff, designed posters and put them up in the school. After all, not only the members of the project group will be going on the 21-kilometer route on Saturday, but also other students from the LMGU.
However, while this is only driven by their own ambition, the members of the project group should keep an eye on the clock during the race. Because if you want to get the top mark of 15 points, you have to stay under 1 hour and 50 minutes as a girl and under 1:40 as a boy. “We have a few who can do it,” says Erhard Schneider with conviction. Is Florian Spöri one of them? In any case, the 18-year-old from Taufkirchen assumes that he will be “a bit nervous” at the start on Saturday. After all, it’s his first half marathon, for which he – like the others in the P seminar – has been preparing for months. “I ran five to six times a week, mostly in the landscape park,” says Florian Spöri. Sometimes a relaxed endurance run was on the program, sometimes mountain runs, sometimes interval and sometimes athletic training. Thanks to this variety, it never got boring despite the large workload, says the 18-year-old. Although he also admits: “In the long run, just running would not be for me.”
Florian Spöri speaks highly of the P-Seminar “Half Marathon”. “If I compare that with the other seminars, then that was definitely the best,” he says. “I really enjoyed it – also because of the practical experience that you gain. We usually don’t have that much at high school.” And incidentally, the training paid off in other ways, says Florian Spöri, who plays football at FC Deisenhofen. “I noticed in training that I’ve gotten much fitter.”