[3] It is one of Germany's largest road running competitions and a total of 15,174 runners participated in the 25th edition in 2010.

[5] Internals disagreements within the organising group and pull-outs from high-profile sponsors affected the race between 2009 and 2011.

A new organising group was established for the 2012 race and Hamburger Sparkasse ("Haspa", a regional bank) became the title sponsor.

This coincided with a resurgence in the elite level race, as both men's and women's course records were broken.

[6] The 2020 edition of the race was postponed to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic, with all entries automatically remaining valid for 2021.