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Wasn’t a catastrophe, but most definitely not the best, at least 2003 and 2006 were better during this decade.

It would take more than one miracle. I’m still hoping for one that will make it all worth it, but so far 2007 won’t even make the top 10.

About two hours ago I took a small dose of philosopher’s stones, psychedelic mushrooms, about half of what one would usually take. Have been smiling almost all the time since and spend the last twenty minutes staring at iTunes “music screensaver” patterns while listening to ambient of what I would rate average quality without psychedelics in my brain. These patterns look trippy all the time, but currently this is a very nice 2001 end sequence experience.

Will try to work (program) now, which was the original plan and the reason for the lower dosage. This is one goal worth pursuing.

So I obviously survived, which was very high on my list of priorities. Ran the first half too fast (1:59:48), but couldn’t really do anything about this due to my “the feet determine the speed” policy. Second half was slower (2:13:03), partly due to hitting almost every refreshment point and then eat/drink while slowly walking for some meters. Lots of water, tea, sport drinks, bananas and some chocolate that I had carried with me.

Somewhere around 30km the “this is insane” idea started popping up again, but in the end it was okay, I had power left to sprint the last few hundred meters and after that could walk to my bicycle and ride home. Dressing after the shower was a challenge though. I’ll have to wait a couple of hours for a final damage report, but so far everything seems to be fine.

The marathon itself is pretty great, not a single gap where nobody was cheering, the last kilometers pure frenzy. It’s also a fast one, Haile Gebrselassie ran a new world record today with 2:04:26. So I guess I’ll do that again.

Before the start one announcement that came through the speakers was concerning the oldest participants: an 81 years old man and an 82 years old woman. I can only hope that in 45 years I will still be fit enough to run a marathon.

Tomorrow at 9AM the 2007 Berlin marathon starts. As usual I waited till the very last moment to pick up my start number, which required me to drive to a fitness fair at the other end of town, usually a 35min bicycle trip if I ignore traffic rules. Unfortunately I had forgotten that half the city center was blocked due to the skater marathon today, and even the secret paths one can usually sneak through were blocked even for pedestrians. So instead of an easy trip it became an one hour sprint around the city. To add to my luck it was raining, so when I arrived about three minutes after the gates officially closed, I was soaked in a mixture of rain and sweat.

Of course, this being Germany the fair hostess guarding the entry told my I was too late and wouldn’t be let in anymore (people were still strolling through the halls). A quick chat with the help desk changed the situation for me (and several others), but we still had to pick another entry, since the dear hostess was a strict believer in enforcing rules. Luckily for me the Berlin police is ways more relaxed about things like ignoring traffic lights, or I would have never gotten to the congress center in the first place.

What followed was another sprint on foot through several halls, finding the desk handling the 28XXX numbers (signs already taken down) and yay! got my number. No force in the verse can stop me now. Besides catching a cold while driving like crazy across town, completely soaked during a chilly day.

Unfortunately this put the final nail in the coffin for my two recovery days before the marathon. Ran for the last time two days ago planing to avoid any exhausting activity afterwards. Then I received an emergency call for help from a rather chaotic friend who moved to Dakar, Senegal today for a couple of months and was stuck while trying to clear out her apartment. We finished at 03:30AM which, combined with some other stupid decisions of mine, resulted in two hours sleep last night. So my final marathon preparation includes packing and hurling heavy boxes for several hours, sleep deprivation and bike sprints. All this also took care of my attempt of carbohydrate loading, so I will go and shop some chocolate in a few minutes. Pigs may fly, but there will never come a time when I will not find a way to rationalize eating chocolate.

Returning from the fair I concluded that all this was obviously insane. But then I passed the finish line where the last couple of hundreds of skaters were rushing in. I passed the people on the sidewalks shouting and applauding. I passed the crowd at the last large turn at 40km, cheering the skaters who looked tired (and very wet), but happy. So yes, all this is insane, but it’s also worth it. To add to the strangeness shortly before arriving home I first passed a group of fireman standing around a traffic light that had just been “mowed down” by a Mercedes, only to find the next traffic light modified with cutouts to display a red heart, a yellow star and a green water drop. Yin and Yang karma stuff.

The Berlin marathon starts the coming sunday at 9AM. So when my iPod nano died about four weeks ago, there really was no reason to stop my preparations. I used the iPod for listening to music (obviously), keeping track of the distance I ran and competing in Nike+ challenges. I have no problems running without music, I have an additional Garmin Forerunner 301 to measure the distance, which I know anyway due to running the same tracks most of the time.

But the challenges … What happened was that I felt “cheated”. I was running, I gained miles, but they wouldn’t count. If they don’t count, I won’t run!

Of course I was aware that this was a pretty stupid approach. But my motivation was somewhat gone. After all attempts to repair the iPod had failed the only escape proved to be to wait for the arrival of the new versions that had been announced a couple of days after the demise of mine. I grabbed one as soon as I could from my local dealer and hit the road again, trying to catch up with the other runners. During the three gadget free weeks I only managed to do two short runs of about 12km each.

So it seems my main source of motivation for the marathon is neither achieving something nor health nor fun. It is other people I don’t even know.

Tomorrow will be one year after I wrote “Done Part I”, when I had stabilized at minus 40lbs for a couple of days. Since then the weight went up again somewhat till spring and then started to fall again. I’m currently back to where I was 12 month ago, between 76kg and 77kg, and still targeting a) 75kg or less and staying below 75kg for a year.

My diet is less restricted than last year ago (more sweets), I pushed my running up to 400km/250mi during the insane May (but didn’t lose any weight during that month due to increased eating), but it seems that my overall behavior was sufficiently changed to stop me from gaining it all back.

To realize this goal might take some time, since I’d have to have $4000 spare cash first and even if I had would have to wait, since the TED conference is always sold out one year in advance. But fortunately they started to put some of the TEDTalks (18 minute talks/presentation given during the TED conferences) online a couple of month ago and continue to add talks from older conferences. They even improve the interface, though a lot remains to be done.

Watching these videos is probably the second best thing to actually attending. I watched at least 40 so far, obviously picked those first that seemed most interesting to me, and most of them are either great or genius. They are all thought provoking and inspiring and many are going to change your view of the world. Hans Rosling gave a presentation of the Gapminder software in 2006 (Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen), opening a completely new perspective on how to see data, only to even top this with his talk in 2007 (New insights on poverty and life around the world). Who would expect a Professor of International Health and studied statistician to get standing ovations for a piece of performance art involving a sword to demonstrate the opportunities in worldwide development? This very well represents the TED mission: spread ideas (in sometimes unexpected ways).

I consider myself well informed, technically up to date, political interested and knowledgeable in many of the subjects frequently discussed at TED, but I’m still blown away by the talks. Spending four days of talks with similarly interested and smart people would probably be a non-stop braingasm. Just thinking about it makes me shiver with excitement.

Of the three requirements I see for running a marathon [a) register, b) sufficient training, c) no injuries] I managed a) and after my 39km/24mi long run three days ago I checked of b).

The final challenge is c) and it looked really good, since the only problems I had the day after the long run were feeling stiff in the morning and another graze from the iPod Nike+ sensor on my left elbow.

Waited till today to hit the road again very carefully and everything started perfectly fine. But after the first few kilometers the “I want it all and I want it now” part of my brain kicked in. I spent half the time of the run (silently) discussing with myself that I should go for 15km, then that if I did 15km I could run half marathon distance as well, which isn’t that much further. Also I could try to get faster, since the long run on Saturday went so well, or change my running style.

Any of this was obviously stupid, even more so considering that hours ago I commented Patrick’s post about injuries by suggesting to run less than physically possibly. Here I was, doing exactly the opposite.

In the end I ran only 11km. Which is perfectly fine three days after the first time I ran 39km in my life. So I escaped insanity for today, still under the influence of possible overstrain as an aftereffect to the long run. Unfortunately I still have five weeks to go and already planed to do another long run over at least full marathon distance in two weeks.

I guess I’ll have to introduce some external limiting factor (the running nanny). Like pilots who have to file a flight plan BEFORE they start. On rainy days some of them probably would like to divert the flight to Honolulu, but in the end they stick to the flight plan for safety reasons. No more Honolulu for me, at least till late September.

1. I can run for 39.1km/24.3mi
2. it is not as much fun as I hoped it would be
3. afterwards it is much easier to ride a bicycle than to walk
4. eating chocolate during the run helps

1) is very useful, since I intend to run the Berlin marathon in about five weeks, 2) and 3) expected, 4) due to a lack of service stations. I guess bananas and warm tea would be better, but since this was a training run around a small bay and back across a bridge (13km/8.1mi) my bicycle was my refreshment station after each of three rounds, providing water, chocolate and even one banana.

One of my goals for the marathon is that it will not be ‘the hardest thing I ever did, but worth it’, but ‘one of the best prepared things I ever did, and I could do it again anytime’. So today was a test how much damage the marathon would do. Not much so far, but final results will be in tomorrow.

I am considering doing another long run over the full marathon distance in two weeks, but am somewhat afraid to overdo it. Had something gone wrong today, there might have been enough time to let it heal till 30th September. But if something goes wrong in two weeks, I most likely won’t be able to run three weeks later.

I am registered for the Berlin Marathon on 30th of September. I ran 402km/250mi in May (fun, but stupid) thanks to an insane Nike plus challenge. Due to another insane Nike plus challenge I ran 52km/32mi (split into two runs of 22km/13.5mi and 30km/18.5mi) within 24h, so I am pretty sure that I’m fit enough for 42km/26mi.

The question is more if I can stay away from injury. Soon after the crazy running May I didn’t and couldn’t run anymore for about six weeks. Started again on 07-21. Did 15 runs since then, (not too) slowly taking on longer distances and today managed 31.5km/19.5mi during a long run I had not even planed. Started out to do about 10km/6mi, but everything went well, so I ended up with three times that distance without proper preparation (food, nothing to drink etc.) Tired, but still walking.

So my hope is rising that this time I might actually make it. I was registered for the same marathon in 2005 and 2006, but was injured shortly before and therefore could not finish my training or compete. Still have to avoid further stupidity (which is always a challenge), but it’s only seven weeks, so it MIGHT ACTUALLY WORK! Unbelievable :-)

About a year after my first entry and about six month after I had lost 40 pounds. Time for a reevaluation:

All this by running a lot (somewhat above 1,000km/620mi within 12 month), doing pilates, ride my bike even more, eating less, eating smarter and shopping with my brain turned on.

What happened? During the winter months I got lazy, so I ran only a few times during December/January. I do Pilates mostly as a warm up, so this went out of the window too. In February I realized this was bad, started running again, overdid it, got injured and could not run for another month.

Things got better in March, ran a half marathon on April 1st, automatically increasing Pilates and decreasing the amount of sweets and unhealthy food.

There is an interesting connection here: I can life on vegetables and water, but I prefer chocolate and (diet) coke. But I cannot run for more than a couple of miles when on a chocolate diet, so the desire to run further drives me to eat healthy, much more than my wish to lose weight. Therefore running contributes to losing weight even more indirectly through a change in diet than directly through burning calories and building muscles burning more calories.

Currently I seem to be back on track to hit 75kg/165lbs (again) due to some Nike+iPod challenges which will drive me to run at least 200km/125mi this month. So vanity is also one of the factors contributing indirectly: I wouldn’t lose weight to look slimmer, but I will run to see the numbers topping 200km.

I will still consider this done once I stay at or below 75kg for a year.

April 1st marked the nth attempt to run an official race, this time the 2007 Berlin half marathon. My former attempts failed, because one of three conditions wasn’t met:

a) actually register
b) sufficient training
c) no current injuries

I ran distances longer than 21km several times, but never under official conditions. The major problem during the last attempts was a combination of overeagerness, stubbornness and ignorance, predictably leading to injuries. So this time my preparation was guided by paranoia and even during the run the primary thought was “don’t blow it, you could still strain a muscle at KM 19”. The panic paid off, I didn’t act stupid and finished in 1:58:42. Not great, but happy anyway. Full marathon in September.

I still need to develop a better feeling for how much is too much. On sunday I finished with a large safety margin (indicated by energy left and reaction of the body afterwards) and would like to get closer to my optimum speed. Unfortunately all previous attempts at this were misguided and ended in injury. So the first goal for the next month is to maintain my capability to train in the first place by acting sane.

The 2006 season basically ended during the last days of November, when I ran 25km/16mi for the first time on my 36th birthday, kind of my present to myself. Ran seven times in December, but only about 60km/37mi altogether, only twice in January.

• ran 15km/9mi
• without warming up
• on a very cold day.

Guess what happened. Surprise, surprise, muscle strain. Didn’t even realize it while running, but two hours later found a large hematoma on my right leg. Been there, done that. At least this time I wasn’t as ignorant as the last few times and really stopped for three weeks.

So six days ago I started again with 7km/4mi and minor problems. Did the same every second day with decreasing trouble and ran 9km/5mi a couple of minutes ago. Therefore I declare my 2007 season reopened. Just in time, since I’m registered for the Berlin half marathon on the 1st of April.

The site already exists, grows about fourfold every year and has about 10,000 registered users, who use it to improve their vocabulary in English, French, German, Italian or Spanish.

That’s nice, but considering that I started working on this as a web project about 10 years ago (first working prototype online in 2003) and wrote my first language trainer at age 14 in 1985 and have wanted to improve things since then it’s rather neglectable.

A number of my other goals are directly related to this one. I guess the main reason I didn’t put it up here was that I don’t want to see this one failing, and it’s easier to ignore lack of progress (like during the last years) if the progress isn’t documented anywhere.

I have not had a TV set for more than ten years. I dislike the programing and the fact that I watch it anyway even though I think it is mostly crap.

But there are some TV series I like and due to the internet and a fast DSL connection I collected a lot of episodes. They are funny, better than just zapping around, and unfortunately swallow a lot of time, because I tend to watch them if I am trying to avoid work. Which I often try.

Some minutes ago I caught myself watching another episode for the fifth time or so, while there is a giant backlog of things I have to do. To watch all the videos in the “TV series” folder once again would have taken about 150 hours. Deleting it took about two seconds. There is no backup.

There is still enough distraction material available, including a large DVD collection. But it was a first step.

• It’s not lack of time.
• It’s not lack of technology.
• It’s not lack of knowledge.
• It’s not lack of money.
• It’s execution.

• I wrote my first elearning tool at age 14 in 1985. A math trainer for my younger brothers, on my Commodore 64.
• My first “income” from elearning was a bar of chocolate given as a prize by my Latin teacher for a working vocabulary trainer for Latin later in 1985.
• Got an Amiga 500 in 1989 primarily to develop elearning tools for my Abitur (German high school degree)
• Somewhere between 1989 and 1993 decided that I wanted to do elearning professionally. In the end of 1993, by then I was studying computer science, I invested basically all the money I had into a 486 and NeXTSTEP and registered a company to do this. I did some smaller projects, but money primarily came from selling hardware.
• In 1997, now working as a part time system administrator, I founded another company with two student friends of mine. We managed to build a language trainer prototype in Java, but then switched to consulting and developing a CRM system for a furniture dealer. Company folded about a year later due to lack of interest and time constrains.
• In 1999 finally quit the admin job to commit myself to elearning 24/7. Ended doing a lot of different jobs, mainly consulting and became involved into a startup doing internet radio as CIO (and sole developer). That one went belly up when the bubble burst in 2001.
• To get back on track in 2001 got a job as lead developer for a company developing data management systems for clinical research while I intended to switch to biotech. Continued to work on language trainers, now web based, in my spare time and put a first prototype online in late 2001.
• Quit the job in 2003 and registered my third company. Since it was obvious that the elearning tools would not bring in enough money in the near future, I started consulting medical companies about data management based on my old contacts. Made a lot of money that way, but it left no time for developing the elearning site, so I hired four people half time to do this. My job from 2001 to 2003 had taught me that I work much better together with other people, so I tried to “buy” this situation. It didn’t work, I got stuck with 100h weeks, permanently traveling between my office in Berlin and my customers in the western part of Germany, a deteriorating health and an inefficient, expensive development process and no break even in sight. When my largest consulting customer was bought and the projects I was working on folded, I ran out of cash within a few month and had to fire my last two employees in 12/2005. Since then I’ve done a number of smaller jobs and basically tried to survive.

I obviously tried before and have some insights in what my problems are:

• I’m a techie. I’m horrible at anything that involves money, accounting, taxes etc., since I don’t really care about it. The same applies to marketing, business strategy, networking etc.
• I do not program for fun, I’m not a hacker. I’m interested in the concepts and good at projecting things, but terrible at executing them. So I know a lot about what I’m doing, what others are doing in that area, what is possible, what technology is available etc., but seldom do anything with it.
• I’m a bad project manager. I myself work best in projects that are already late and basically lost. This provides enough adrenalin for me to focus and I can use my talent to improvise. Without stress the focus gets lost almost immediately and nothing gets done. In 2001 this got a name: ADHD
• My business model does not work. Or at least it will not work until there are a lot of users and I care more about actually making money.
• Partners/coaches only help for a short time, after that anything will drown in chaos.
• A lot of other things

1. I am very passionate about the subject of elearning,
2. am very stubborn and not easily scared away by the perspective of recurring total disasters,
3. not sufficiently attracted by financial security, wealth, vacation, social status, career or anything a possibly wise decision based on the experience of the last 20 years might lead me to and finally
4. there is nobody in sight who will do it for me.

And the time is now. After half a year of apathy I started improving the site again, I most likely will get a new project (elearning system for a Russian movie production house) that will support me for half a year and pay off my debt, and have been playing with a lot of ideas lately (while most of the features planed since day one still aren’t implemented). I have some new ideas how to handle my weirdness, especially by involving the users, just short of 8000 now and currently answering about 700,000 vocabulary questions each month. Maybe enough time has passed so that the “stay focused” is burned sufficiently deep into my brain and the hundreds of time management, development process and similar books have left enough scars.

If not, I’ll probably re-crash, re-burn, stand up again and rererere-try in a couple of years.

Or get smart and change something fundamentally. We’ll see. First another sacrifice to the gods of business.

When I wrote that I expected my weight to stay stable due to my permanent lifestyle change, I was wrong. Mostly about the permanent lifestyle change.

Once the 75kg were reached, the focus on what I eat somewhat got lost and a short time later I was actually shocked when I almost hit 78kg. There is always a little fluctuation, but this was too much. I got it down again by reentering “smart shopping” mode, eating a lot of fruit for some days and running half marathon distance in preparation for running a full marathon, but the shock remains.

This most likely hasn’t happened for the last time. I’m not sure about my current weight, but I’m very aware of the amount of food I consumed within the last two days, triggered by shopping not only in “dumb” but “zombies ate my brain” mode. A quick calculation results in at least 7000kcal, counting only the main ingredients, probably a lot more.

Motivation to control this might come from another direction. I started training for a marathon again in August after two months of injury. Everything went fine, but I felt exhausted after the long runs and had major problems crossing the 15km limit. Soon the suspicion turned to food, since I already had experienced that stamina directly related to what I ate the day(s) before. Once I switched back to “healthy” running got easier. The half marathon distance wasn’t even intended, I just wanted to see during training how fit I currently was and decided to run as long as there were no signs of injury or massive fatigue.

Turned out that the change in diet for just a week had a major impact on my condition. So now I have two incentives to “shop smart”: size and distance.

What are non-material possessions? A non complete list which basically says “focus!”

• Sometimes manifested as books, magazines or CDs, the character is non material like with bookmarks, MP3 files, PDFs etc. Mostly text, audio, video or pictures. I’m into information, I have hundreds of CDs and DVDs, several thousand books, even more eBooks and probably an infinite amount of further references. Add the internet and you end up with several hours per day just reading through new stuff. This of course is not all bad, actually it’s a lot of fun. But also a lack of focus. I guess I’d be happier in the long run if I spend more time using all the information instead of primarily consuming it. Since I show obvious signs of addiction the best way might be to get rid of the substance of abuse first. I already “turn of the internet” from time to time to achieve this.

• All those things I want(ed) to do or still want to do and keep thinking about instead of doing them. New ones are generated out of thin air every minute, but few ever go anywhere. Accepting your own mortality means accepting that time is limited and thus not everything can be done. So throwing out projects is mental house cleaning.

• Doors kept open, parachutes in case things don’t work out. Obviously one should always keep some options, but just as many as are really necessary. In a world of infinite choice choosing will be a burden.

• Fear is kind of a negative option, a prejudice either based on experience or education to stop you from doing things that might hurt or harm you. So basically a good thing. Unfortunately it is not hard to realize that most of my fears are not concerning life threatening situations, but mostly the expected reaction of others in a way that stops me from trying things. I’m not talking about becoming a total jerk, but e.g. about asking any person on the street I find interesting for whatever reason to sit down and chat. Even with a 90% failure rate it would result in meeting a lot of interesting people.

• I intend to stay alive as long as possible (and I want to), primarily by behaving smart and healthy. I might get cancer nonetheless, so health insurance seems like a good idea, but I would rather accept every of my material belongings to be lost by fire than considering ensuring myself against fire, hail, floods etc. It’s just stuff. And if I already assume I don’t really need it, why use/own it in the first place? Might seem a little extreme, but I turned off the warm water about half a year ago and now shower with water at (I guess) about 15°C/59°F or less. I no longer shower for half an hour (guess why), waste less energy and water (and money), probably improved my health, am more awake (and have more time) and never feel cold when stepping out of the shower. Sure hot water is more comfortable, but somehow it’s “just not worth it” for me. Hard to explain why, it has something to do with the feeling of depending on things I know I do not really need.

For a couple of months now I have been doing the basic exercises on an almost daily basis. Never managed to get much further, since a) I’m obviously too lazy to read on and b) it already works for me. I needed something to strengthen my back to get rid of pain there and this worked just fine.

A couple of weeks ago I watched the first half of a Pilates DVD and realized I should focus a little more on stretching, but was already too bored to watch the rest. So I guess my “learning process” will proceed slowly for a very long time, but it really does not matter since the most important part is doing “something” not completely wrong on a regular basis. Doing it better or more advanced would be a nice goody, but so I have something to look forward to if I get too bored with my current routine (which is already enhanced by non Pilates crunches and push ups).