At the age of 20 I signed up to do a Marathon with two friends of mine in one year time. We planned to train together for a whole year, but before we started actual training, both of my friends got injuries and withdrew from the race. I remained but somehow didn’t start training at all…stupid I know. That year went by quickly and I ended up facing that Marathon with no endurance training at all in the books. I didn’t know anything about pace or HR zones or anything alike, but for some reason I was committed that I would finish that race and I did. Despite there was no reason to believe in me finishing that Marathon, I had an unshakeable belief that I would. You can call that delusional if you want, but not finishing that race was actually no option I considered, therefore it didn’t exist for me. So when I finished that race in a quite respectable time of 4:45h my life changed forever, because I accidentally stumbled across the power of the mind. I got obsessed with that topic and started studying everything I could find about mindset and the power of the mind. Two years later I did an Ironman again with very very little preparation in advance. This time it was different, because I really planned on doing a proper preparation but we moved places and life happened. Due to different reasons I lined up for another race with no preparation at all. I managed to finish that race and completely fell in love with the sport of Triathlon. After that Ironman I wanted to become a „real“ Athlete and take training serious. About eight months later, I decided to go for a professional career and finally make that kid’s dream of making a living off sports reality. A quite severe illness called RED-S Syndrom hit me shortly after that decision. Within a couple of weeks, my performance declined to an all time low and I reached a point where „normal“ life became challenging and I had to rest after walking up 20 stairs. It would have been easy to give up on my dream of becoming a pro athlete back then, but I refused to do so and continued. 

I am still on that journey now so I can’t tell you that „I made it“ yet and it definitely didn’t become easy. I still face some minor and major struggles and challenges but combining everything I have read and learned about mindset mixed with my own experiences, I am learning more of myself everyday and that’s what I love about this so much.