The beginning of my running activities
There were two major turning points that pushed me into running: First there was this magic day somewhere back in 2004. My job took me to Amsterdam together with my boss and a colleague. On the way back we went through the standard controls at the airport and were already very late. We rushed to the gate when the final boarding was announced and just when we came to the plane I heard the announcement” the person who has left his mobile phone at the Xray control is asked to pick it up”. What could run through my mind else than- how can one forget his mobile phone? Well I decided to switch mine off and realized with a shock that it was ME who was dumb enough to forget his phone at the control. Now I ran back all the way from the outer gates at Schiphol Airport to the Xray, picked up my phone after an eternity and heard “Gate XY is closing for boarding now”. I ran and ran and ran and although I wasn't very fast I heard my heart racing like hell and I finally made it to the plane. When I sat down and was completely soaked I decided that I needed to do something about my fitness. It had degraded in no time and I realized how many times I spent the evenings at the hotel bars with colleagues until late in the night and how little sport I was doing.
Now I started to jog twice a week and honestly-I was disgusted, I had pain in my side and quickly turning at my limits without having fun. Luckily I happened to take care of Finland in my job and the next time I was waiting for my plane in Helsinki I strolled through the duty free and saw one of these Finish made heartbeat monitor watches. Well in the end why not? Another gadget more or less- I wanted to give it a try and purchased a titanium version of my first polar haertbeat monitor. The ad said that it would tell you about your daily form and that it would advise you on your personal training zone to quickly progress. This is what I wanted and needed.
The watch proved to be interesting and I was surprised to see how much my daily form was impacted by the lack of sleep and other factors.
At this time I had not taken any advice on how to train and I was mostly running at the higher end of the recommended zones. If only I had seeked some advice. I literally forced myself to run and from my gut feel I'd say I was training twice or three times a week. My results improved but not at a level where I would be even an average runner.
I then read about an interesting gadget that was launched: a heartbeat monitor combined with a GPS, the Garmin Forerunner 305. This gadget was supposed to track your exercises on the computer and what was more important to me- it had a function where a virtual buddy was running against you on your saved track. I could see on my wrist if he was ahead or behind me and by how much. This was extremely stimulating to me. I started to do 10km runs and compare again and again, always trying to be faster than the last time. With my todays knowledge I realize that this was complete crap and that it couldn't bring me forward.
In the meantime I had a paragliding accident where I crashed on 3200m in the Swiss Alps, only my safety parachute saved my life. The result was a broken toe, my back shifted and my need for more adrenaline down to 0. I sold my whole gear after one week as did my wife and I was to a point where I wondered what I would do next.
I continued running and during the summer vacation we stayed in Sicily. Lying only at the beach was boring and I wanted to keep my body in shape so I ran along the beach and up and down some hills. A very physical exercise given the 40 degrees. I managed to bring my pulse above 200bpm when I ran up some steep ways, something I should never ever be able to reach. I was very much surprised that my body allowed me to perform in this heat and one year later in Sardinia I repeated the exercise and ran across the mountain, a very nice track which I extended every day. When I looked at the map I realized that it could be a trip that lead me to another coast and I decided to give it a try. The temperatures were again brutal and I had no water with me.
This time I managed to run to the other side, jump into the sea and then run back again , up and down, through some pine plantations, across completely dry land and experiencing an incredible pleasure to push my body so far and to see such a great landscape that I could have never seen else than by foot. During this run I had the first time the idea to run a marathon.
