Run, Koper, run

I love numbers. I love stats. I love keeping track of things. I could tell you all the books I've read (since 2007), courtesy of LibraryThing and Shelfari (that's a total of 348 books, roughly 1 per week). I could tell you all the movies I've seen in many, many years, courtesy of IMDB . Since 1999 I weigh myself almost daily and keep track of that too. And no, it's not because I have weight problems and I need to. It's just because I love numbers. But there is nothing cooler for collecting stats than sports. I started running in 2003 and I can tell you, in much more detail than you care about, about every single workout I did since then. I know. It's awesome. I won't bore you with too much detail, but today is time (what with the new year and all) to look at the running grand totals for 2013. Let's start with, likely, the most important stat for every runner. Yes, annual mileage, I'm looking at you. The story this graph tells is pretty clear: ...

I've been running for so many years that I hardly remember how it all started. But I do. It was a weekend. With my good friends, Lukasz & Lukasz we hit a party. Business as usual. For the "after-party" we went to primary school grounds. It happened to have a running track and we were sitting in its stands. We didn't care much; we were just content, sipping our beers... Until one of us had this crazy idea to race each other on the track. It was summer. We wore sandals -- hardly appropriate shoes for running. Not to mention the obvious: we were drunk as skunks. None of this stopped us. We raced a lap. Then we raced two. I don't remember what happened afterwards but I do remember that the following day two of us went for a run. This time sober. And somehow, with me, it stuck. It was 2003 and running was far less popular than it is now, when it almost seems that there are more runner than non-runners. Actually, back then more than once I got some weird stares ...