Day −95
Running a thousand marathons begins with the first — click.
A warm welcome to all of you. I'm inviting you to a place where you'll get to know the whole project from the day it was born. You can come aboard and become a fellow passenger on this extraordinary challenge.
This isn't only about running. Running is maybe the smallest part of it :) And yet… it's hard to ignore the fact that every single day I'll have to take a fair few steps, to cover 42.195 km on foot. So it'll be about sport, about diet, recovery, psychology. It'll be about me — how I'm coping — and about the people close to me — how they're handling it. There'll be blazing sun, pouring rain, fingers numb with cold. There'll be joyful days and sad ones.
Three years — a lot happens in a life.
I'd like this story — made up of hundreds of entries — to fully capture the spirit of what I'm going to live through, and to pull you right inside it.
It all starts in the head. A year or two ago a little imp settled into my thoughts. 1000 marathons in 1000 days.
I don't fully know how ideas come to be. First there are micro-fragments, quick flashes. Pieces from different subjects start fitting together, the mind finds a common denominator, and suddenly you're standing in the middle of the street — or, in my case, driving down the motorway all night — and you say your piece: eureka.
But an idea isn't a real step. We have no idea how many wonderful, breakthrough ideas were born in human heads and stayed there too — died and never crossed the barrier into the real world.
…
I was driving. To Poland and back two days later. Twenty hours of solitary travel in total. Everything was falling into place. Ideas poured out of me one after another. When I got home I slept the night, and in the morning I drove my son to school. Then I climbed my aluminium stairs up to the attic and opened a spreadsheet. A blank document. New. Name: "1000." And a moment later a folder of the same name appeared on the desktop, with subfolders inside. Sheets, Media, Sponsors, Contracts, Invoices, Cost estimates, Calendar, Ideas, Website, Photos, Videos, Reels, Posts…
For me, projects like this are a giant machine. Thousands of questions to settle:
How much does it cost, how to finance it, how to promote it, how to keep people curious, which companies, which media, which markets, what kind of activity, what charitable cause, the colour scheme, the motto, cash flow, how to optimise taxes, the website, in how many languages, how to recover, what to eat, how…
Before the first post promoting the challenge can go out, every one of these questions has to have its answer. And once it finally does, one thing remains: to prepare the infrastructure. The right website, the right places on FB, IG, TikTok, YT and so on, where the project will live. To set up the communication channels. To sign the first anchor sponsor. To reach an understanding with foundations.
For the last two weeks of my life I've been completely submerged in HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
It's a funny story, actually. It was 2013 or 2014. I was working in a greenhouse. And I decided I'd use my best abilities to change my life, my work and my earnings. I decided I'd become — a programmer. I studied in every spare moment: programming languages, building websites, databases — all so I could create my own business app and work as a freelance developer.
A few years of learning went by and I was doing really well. Until triathlon appeared in my life, and in the end it took over, changed it — and with it my work and my earnings. And programming? All my books gave up their shelf space to ones about human physiology, anatomy, physiotherapy, nutrition, running, cycling, swimming… Until one day, while cleaning, I threw them all out.
And now, when I start new projects, I start by building a website, a store, automation panels to help manage it all — and all day long, on every training session, logic loops run through my head. We've lived to see times when all of this has become far more accessible, and even my rusty programming knowledge — with the support of AI — helped me handle the whole thing.
Everything set in motion. Everything prepared. A thousand days mapped out in detail.
"Day 286. Monday, 21 June 2027. Sevenum, the Netherlands.Extra data: longest day of the year, the solstice, the day lasts nearly 17 h.Music Day — ask in the CTA about a favourite track. Giraffe Day — David's favourite cuddly toy when he was a baby. Skateboard Day — explain the cadence and heart-rate charts as the fingerprint of a record's authenticity. Tired after the journey, probably back from PL at midnight. Child to school in the morning 6:00–8:30. Start the marathon later, around 12:00. Marathon until about 17:00. Emails for clients in between. In the evening, put together training plans. Content — blog on the website (dictate to the assistant along the way), updates (after the trip, the cats, sleep, breakfast, supplements, sponsor of the day, 4 from the run, after the run, Garmin data, evening work, dinner), a post about music in sport and in training, a reel — running with headphones…"
That's exactly what it looks like. The easiest part is what's left — to run a few marathons.
And you — have a look around. I've spent a lot of time here, preparing this place for us. There's a blog, there's a calendar with the locations and details of the runs, and soon I'll plug in the Strava data. Supporters will find everything I'll be living by for a thousand days; companies — the sponsorship packages and contracts; media — materials and photos. The rest you'll discover in the menu.
The next entry will be about what matters most — about the reasons and the goals that drive me.
And if you want to know why someone reasonably sane decides to run a thousand marathons — come back here in a few days. Bookmark this address, join me wherever suits you. You've already taken the first step. It was a click. The rest we'll do together.
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