Catalin Sanpetrean

How it all started

All this running madness began as a game (more like a childish impulse) by running my first half marathon (in the spring of 2011), at the first edition of Cluj International Marathon. Back then I just wanted to prove to my sister, Ioana, that you can run this race with no special equipment, without training or a healthy lifestyle. In all these conditions I was able to finish the race in an honorable time (1:32:35), but the next 3 days I was walking like a robot, then I stopped running.

One year later, at the second edition of the Cluj International Marathon, I told myself that I couldn’t run the same race as in the previous year (again I used my instincts) so I registered to run my first marathon. The difference this time was made by the new pair of running shoes that I bought (Asics Gel Trabuco 14 – shoes that I’m still using) and I also ran a few laps before the big race, without a precise schedule. Again I finished the race with a good time (3:38:42), performance that did not motivated me to go further with this new lifestyle. Instead I continued having a lifestyle incompatible with sports.

It followed a summer with a lot of challenges; one of then was a bike accident that kept me in bed for more than a month with a pretty scary diagnosis: brain injury with hematoma, seizures, concussions and other fractures. This whole experience calmed me down and made me see how important it is to be healthy and to be able to practice sports. I recovered pretty well, in February 2013 I met Tudor and we started running, training for the next race, International Marathon Cluj 2013. I was running for the first time during the winter and this gave me an amazing health boost. After all the training the good result came and we obtained our personal best time at the moment for a marathon (3:13:38) finishing the race in the same time. I was feeling great!

From that moment I quit the unhealthy lifestyle (with a lot of alcohol, smoking and sleepless night) and I chose the way that made me feel full of life. The transformation was quite sharp and I have to thank for it also to Tudor that helped me all this time and gave me a lot of credit. Many competitions with good results followed and I started to know myself better both physically and mentally.

Starting from Tudor’s new passion for triathlon and all his stories about IRONMAN I decided to start a new swimming and cycling training, setting a new goal: to finish those 226km of swimming, cycling and running.