Gauge Coupling Unification, SUSY Scale and Strong Coupling Running

The apparent unification of gauge couplings around 10^16 GeV is one of the strong arguments in favor of Supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model (SM). In this contribution two new analyses of the gauge coupling running, the latter using in contrast to previous studies not data at the Z peak but at LEP2 energies, are presented. The generic SUSY scale in the more precise novel approach is 93 < M_SUSY < 183 GeV, easily within LHC, and possibly even within Tevatron reach.