Running The Marathon

Not a story about any marathon. A story about The Marathon.

How can a marathon be compared to something that we do at Cinnober? It depends how you see it. I think running a marathon is like launching a product without acceptance test, without testing in production environment and barely without have run a full capacity test.

So, who can be that stupid that you expose your self for something like that? I was. And the other 8399 first Stockholm Marathon runners earlier this month. I mean, the other 10000 know what they were getting in to on for hand.

It all started in September when I wanted to have a new goal with my training. Pär Bertilsson and I walked down the stairs at our former premises at Industrigatan, checking out for the weekend when Pär was asking what I was training for. I answered “I think I’m going to run Stockholm Marathon”. To be honest, I think I was more surprised by the answer than Pär was. Said and done I headed home, started my computer and spent 2 hours surfing among Marathon Training Programs. The longest I run so far was half a marathon. But a marathon felt doable so I signed up. I also sent an email to my family and friends telling that May 31 2008 I was going to run my first Stockholm Marathon. Perfect. Just making sure there is no way of regretting.

36 weeks to go. Late September. I started to train immediately. It was so fun! After running two half marathons this was just what I needed.

22 weeks to go. December. No snow. The perfect marathon winter! The official marathon training program starts.

15 weeks to go. February, just 2 degrees, rain. The first proof of concept, 25+ km. Besides that I could not speak the last 10 km since my mouth was so frozen, it went well! Feeling confident!

4 weeks to go. There has been around 7 or 8 pass around 27-30 km. Here comes the one and only longest lap before the race. 33 km. It is the warmest weather of the year. 26 degrease. I’m running out of water. Thirsty with 7 more km to go. 4 more km, stopping at a gas station to refill my water bottles. Can’t barely run the last km. Anyway, I wasn’t that worried for the race. I had after all run totally 81 km this week.

1 week to go. The big day is coming up. Almost only rest on the schedule this week. Feeling unreal. All training since September just focusing on May 31.

On the starting line. I can’t remember that I had any feelings at all

10 km. I’m flying

26 km. Just heading in to Strandvägen from Djurgården. Soo beautiful!

30 km. I promise you that every new generation, old generation and young generation of my muscle cells was just full of garbage. Is there a way of triggering a human garbage collection, please let me know

30-40 km. Has 10 km ever been this far?

40 km. Seeing Stockholm Stadion. (Probably dreaming since you can’t see it from here) Getting new energy and increasing the speed.

41950 m. Entering Stockholm Stadion. Almost double the speed (it feels like anyway). I’ll never forget this moment. The grandstand is crowded with people watching me crossing the finishing line. Or did they? I don’t care. Crossing that line was such a relief. But at the same time sad. Now it’s over. Time to find new goals to over come.

Having said that, I can guarantee you that I will do everything I can be as prepared as possible to any production launch! Not knowing if the capacity is enough or not knowing if the hardware is ideal is not something that you want to be part of when the whole company’s reputation is at stake. Or even worse, our customer’s reputation.

The best thing is that I’m not the only one at Cinnober that has run The Marathon. We are many strugglers. And I’m sure there are more to come. Isn’t there J-O?