Enrique Criado Navamuel is a 41-year-old runner from Madrid who is currently the Consul General of Spain in Frankfurt am Main (Germany).

He is also a lawyer, writer, Real Madrid fan and an amateur footballer himself. On top of that he has two young children who grow up in a multilingual environment (German, French, Bulgarian, Spanish and English).

Enrique ran his first ever marathon last October in Frankfurt am Main and it didn't go exactly as he had in mind.

What we talk about:

* Expectations vs Reality

* The three crises he suffered during the race and the most important lesson he learned

* Football and former footballers who run marathons

* Raising two little polyglots

* Books, writing and why reading is a must if you want to be a writer

* The extraordinary life lesson he learned from the Congolese as a young diplomat in the Congo

His running book recommendation:

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by the great Haruki Murakami

Some of his own books we talk about:

- Cosas que no caben en una maleta, vivencias de un diplomático novato en el Congo (Aguilar, Penguin Random House, Colibrí)

- El paraguas balcánico (Aguilar, Penguin Random House)

- Muchas vidas y un destino (Sial Pigmalión)

The book he was inspired by:

The Innocent Anthropologist by Nigel Barley

You can find him at the Consulate General of Spain in Frankfurt am Main, on twitter (@ECriadoNavamuel) and, probably, at the starting line of some half marathons in Germany.

Huge "Danke schön" to Enrique Criado Navamuel for sharing his story with me! 😊

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Bye for now, and enjoy English for the long run!

Living Life by Scott Holmes Music