HSG postman Roger Coray runs and runs and runs

“Anyone can do that,” he said, Roger Coray recalls. He and some colleagues hatched the idea at the regulars' table: they would run the 2007 Berlin Marathon. Six of them travelled to Berlin with hardly any training. Three of them slept off a night of partying, but Coray, who was 40 at the time, ran to the finish line – in swimming trunks because he didn't own any athletic shorts and a freshly operated collarbone fracture.

From then on, he was hooked. He completed more marathons, got faster and finally managed his first Ironman in Zurich in 2009: 3.8 kilometers of swimming, 180 kilometers on a racing bike, followed by a marathon. “I wanted to prove that an amateur like me can master an Ironman with willpower and without changing his lifestyle,” says the now 57-year-old. He also didn't have the time for countless hours of training. Coray has been working full-time for the HSG's internal postal service for 16 years and is the father of two.

“My childhood made me tough”

Coray's hair is long and dark grey, and when he goes for a run he always puts on a black shirt belonging to his motorcycle club, Falcons MC, of which he has been a member for 37 years. This makes him a bit of an exotic figure in the running scene. What's more, to this day he has neither a heart rate monitor nor a training plan. Yet his achievements are remarkable: in recent years, he has taken on extreme ultramarathons, including a race in Wales in 2019 where he ran and climbed 315 kilometers and 16,000 meters of elevation in five days through deserted areas. “Just thinking back on it makes me get a hunger-related dizzy spell.” And in August 2024, he completed the “Crossing Switzerland” trail for the second time: 430 kilometres and 22,000 meters of climbing from Vaduz to Montreux.

Where does Coray get his mental strength? “I'm just a man from the Rhine Valley,” he says with a laugh, alluding to the cliché that the inhabitants of the valley in eastern Switzerland are stubborn, a little strange, wild guys. Coray speaks of ‘highlanders’.

He grew up in the small town of Altstätten in the Rhine Valley, where he still lives today, with 10 siblings in simple circumstances. “My childhood was good, but it also made me tough. On weekends, I helped out in the garden and in winter, I had to roast chestnuts and help people move. I rarely had time off and we only ate meat once a week.”

He did an apprenticeship at the post office and then spent years riding postal train wagons all over Switzerland. “I worked hard during those 12-hour shifts, loading and unloading sacks and parcels.” Sometimes he travelled in open wagons that had once been used to transport livestock. ‘In winter, it was incredibly cold in there,’ he recalls. But that was also a school of life and an experience he was able to draw on when he ran for hours in the freezing rain during ‘Crossing Switzerland’.

Rats: tough as a rat

“My goal is to finish the race. I run at a comfortable pace. I've just seen too many runners go too fast in the first few kilometres and then drop out,” says Coray, who is called ‘Rats’ by his friends. ‘Rats are tough,’ he says by way of explanation, and laughs.
But of course, he doesn't run for the sake of suffering. “When I'm running, I'm in the moment, I'm in nature, I'm solving specific problems: what to wear, what to eat.” It's liberating. In addition, running has created strong connections. “When you have to push through a tough run together, it creates a special bond. These are unique friendships.”

Coray has remained a postman at heart: after 25 years with the postal service, he has been organizing the postal service at HSG for 16 years. As a result of digitalization and reorganization, the team has shrunk and Coray is now on his own. “I like meeting a wide variety of people at HSG as a postman. I generally enjoy being on the go,” he says. He has also been impressed by the growth of HSG, which he has witnessed. “I noticed it mainly from the fact that I had to keep track of the frequently changing addresses,” he says and laughs. He delivers and collects internal and external mail on the main campus and at locations throughout the city.

On the road with bears

What goals does the extreme athlete still have? He has already crossed the finish line 13 times in the Berlin Marathon, and the 14th time is scheduled for 2024. In 2025, he and his family will travel to Asia and, among other things, he wants to run up the legendary Mount Fuji in Japan. Later that same year, he has signed up for the Transylvania 100k – an ultra-run through the Romanian wilderness where you can also encounter bears. “You just have to be faster than the runner behind you,” says Coray and laughs.