Donald Bierer

I ran my first marathon in 1991 at the Napa Valley Marathon when I was a post-doctoral student at UC Berkeley. I made many rookie mistakes during that first marathon: my longest run up to that point had been about 15 miles, and I went out and tried to run my 10K pace and hold it for as long as I could. Needless to say, I crashed badly at 35K and ended up injured. Although I had no intention of ever running another marathon again, I later realized my errors and ran my second marathon a year later in Portland, OR. After noticing that my first three marathons were in three different states by chance, I decided to set running the states as a goal, not knowing that there was actually a club of runners doing that. But in 2007 we had to move to Germany. I therefore decided to postpone my goal of finishing the states and I began to run countries and Summer Olympic sites in Europe, starting with Helsinki, followed by Amsterdam, Antwerp, Prague, Reykjavik, and Berlin in the first year. When I realized that I had already qualified for Marathon Maniacs, I joined in 2011 and have since achieved iridium status. I have been a member of Marathon Globetrotters since the beginning, signing up when the club was launched. In addition, I also belong to the 50 States + DC Club and the Country Club. My short-term running goals are to get to 50 countries, finish the Summer Olympic sites in Europe, and after completing my 100th marathon, join the 100 Marathon Deutschland Club. Then I want to go back and finish the US states.

Marathoning has become my lifetime hobby. Professionally I work as a research chemist at Bayer in Wuppertal, Germany. I am married and have one son living in the US. When I am not running, I enjoy taking care of our Bichon Frise.