The running project commenced for no particular reason in the summer of 2007. This was when I finally got my act together after for already some time having thought that it would be nice to run a decent marathon time one day.
For the past next 15+ years I had done very little running, quite a bit of studying, and working. To put it bluntly, in 2007 I was completely out of shape.
Thanks to competitive running in high school (800 and 1500 meters), I had a pretty good idea about what was required for improving performance and results:
An ambitious goal (…for instance a time in a specific race) Systematic approach to training (…a weekly / daily training schedule) Documentation and follow-up (…otherwise it is too easy to skip the work outs)
Very simple but often forgotten!
I neither had a clue about what marathon time would be realistic, nor how much I could run per week. I decided to go big, and signed up for the Berlin 2008 marathon, leaving about one year for preparations.
One of my oldest friends was running quite seriously, and helped with putting together the first marathon training program. After having paid the race fee, hotel, and flights almost one year in advance there was no way of pulling out of the project.
Rock ‘n Roll!