Benedikt Huber – a German athletics champion for 800m, and engineer at our Traunreut site, shares his secrets for balancing his sporting career with his professional life at BSH.

It’s hard enough under normal circumstances to find a good work-life-balance. Benedikt Huber, however manages to successfully juggle his personal life, successful sporting career and his work as an engineer at our Cooking Competence Center in Traunreut.

A record-breaking year

On June 19th 2016, Benedikt won the title of German national champion for 800m, at the German National Championships held in Kassel. He led the race from the start, denying all attempts made by his competitors to pass him and won with an impressive time of 1:47.17. After the race he said, “I was watching my competitors on the display board” and “I was really hoping for gold.” His race tactics paid off.

By the European Championship entry standards, his winning time was 7/100ths of a second over the time needed to qualify for Germany, but since he won so spectacularly he qualified regardless.

Winning the German title propelled Benedikt into the spotlight. He says, “my phone did not stop ringing and I suddenly had more likes on my Facebook page than ever before.” His success was also celebrated at work, “at a public viewing of our site I was asked by the organizer to speak to the guests” he says. He was also honored by the site’s manager during a general meeting.

At the Sparkassen-Gala, a big athletics event held by his club in Regensburg in June he broke his own record for the 800m and ran the race in under 1:47 for the first time, with a time of 1:46.57. As he won the German Championships confidently he was nominated for the European Championships and got to wear the brand new national kit for this event. Immediately he put it on for the next training session at the stadium in Traunreut. “All I was thinking about was the upcoming European Championships”, he said, “and the shirt definitely helped.”
In July, the new German champion took his place on the start line at the European Championships, representing Germany for the first time. He fought his way to the semi-finals and ran a strong race but did not make the finals this time around. In the overall rankings he came in at an impressive 10th place.

Latecomer

Benedikt came relatively late to the 800m event. He was 22 when he first competed at the German National Championships, 23 when he first broke the 1:50 barrier and 26 when he became the German National Champion. He attributes this to the fact that he had not trained for any particular event and competed in various other sports before eventually committing to athletics. “Football, table tennis, judo, athletics, I’ve tried it all ” he says.

The elusive work/life/training balance

Competing at this high level of sporting competition requires a huge amount of time and training. Benedikt estimates that he ran 4.200 kilometres last year alone, and this year he is set to run an impressive 200 to 300 kilometres more. Benedikt also travels a distance of 160 kilometres, from Oberbayern to Oberpfalz, to train there on weekends, and regularly attends training camps for his club LG Telis Finanz Regensburg. It would seem that his commitments to his sport would be quite hard to manage alongside his professional career with BSH.

Until 2015, Benedikt worked full-time and trained on the side, as much as he could. “My life then was just a mix of work, training, eating and sleeping” which proved to be way too much for him, he says. So in the past year he worked together with his team in Traunreut to reduce his working hours to 26 per week, “for that I am really grateful” he says.

Benedikt studied at Rosenheim and works as an engineer in the development of ovens. He says that he’s really pleased with his career progression at the moment and the working environment suits him. As for his colleagues, Benedikt says that they “get really excited when I take part in big competitions, perhaps it’s because I like to take them all out to celebrate when it goes well for me.”

Next year we are excited to have the opportunity to support him in the lead up to the World Championships in London. To qualify he says that he needs to run the 800m in under 1:45.75. We will also be able to support him at his ‘Home’–*European Championships in Berlin* in 2018. We’re right behind you Benedikt!

PS: If you would like to follow his sport career, training and competition updates, you can follow Benedikt on his Facebook Page. His next competitions are coming soon: He will start on May 13th in Regensburg. The 400m race is only a test for him as he says. The next starts at the 800m start line will be on May 19th in Karlsruhe and one day after this in Tübingen, Germany.