Hallo Füsters!
GG’s here with the Winterfüste game debrief for 2026. While not everyone finished out the entire game, if you’re getting this final update it means you contributed on some level by adding your own sweat and tears (and miles!) to this year’s game and GG wanted to give everyone some visibility to how it all played out.
Let’s start with some collective stats:
Total walking/hiking distance: 7,796 miles (or roughly the distance from SF to Boston and back!) So basically this group walked across the continental U.S. and then back home. Ridiculous.
Total running distance: 2,722 miles (so yeah, we ran from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic!)
Total cycling distance: 2,946 miles (again, another coast to coast adventure!)
Total spinning time: 30 DAYS . . . yes, let’s say that again. This group road a spin trainer for an entire month with no stopping. This is an insane stat. If the average Füster road at 10mph, that would add another 7K miles to the cycling total!
Total swimming distance: 93,542 yards for 53 miles (basically across the English Channel and back again)
Total rowing distance: 317K meters or 197 miles
Total homework assignments completed: 1267 . . . that’s 64,000 push-ups and 25 hours of planking!
So total distance covered this game was roughly 20,708 miles, just shy of circumnavigating the entire planet (24,901 at the Equator)!
One of the most impressive things about these stats is this was one of the smallest cadres of Füsters for a Winterfüste event since the early days in the two thousand and teens. We started with 100 players and effectively finished with 35. The completion rate is usually around 50-60% so this demonstrates a pretty big drop off from the mean. GG never really understands the ebb and flow of the players and why some years hit harder than others. He has his theories around the impact of the outside world right now and how hard everything is and what effect that might have on all of us but will have to wait a few more years to prove that out.
Congratulations again to our four Bestenfüstes wtih Colugo, Pocket Gopher, Red Wolf and Ringtail each posting a Komplettes Spiel (complete game)! This is a very, very difficult thing to pull-off once, let along repeating it multiple times (as three of the four ladies have done here).
And congrats also to everyone who finished the game (especially our group of Neo-Füstes or first time Füsters who absolutely killed it this Winterfüste!). Even if you didn’t score all the points, you still crossed that finish line and can look back at an excellent 10 week personal campaign of self-discipline and sacrifice that hopefully paid off with a little less flank meat hanging around your mid-line!
As for the Füste itself, GG will be taking it off-line for the rest of the year. He made a personal deal with himself year’s ago that we would be legitimate by the ten year mark or close the doors. After nine years and 20 total Füsting events, it’s time to concentrate on the build out of real infrastructure and break our dependency on vendors like Smartsheets and Squarepace and even STRAVA. So we either come back with our own full set-up or it’s probably time to say auf wiedersehen. To that, if anyone knows of some code writers who need work on the side, do GG a solid and send their contact info his way (these elusive creatures are more difficult to find than you think).
So that’s a wrap for 2026. Thanks again to everyone who signed up for this organized madness, whether you crossed the finish line or not. GG is always incredibly impressed by your accomplishments during each Füste event and this year was no different! Have a great rest of 2026 and here’s hoping we all see each other again on the Spielbrett sometime down the road! Danke to you all!
May the Füste be with you!
Griswalde Grolar