The Last Km

I chose "The Last Km" as the title of this blog because this term has a special meaning for me, and in time I developed various interpretations for that concept.

In this blog, I'd like to share notes on experiences and thoughts with people like me: amateur athletes who want to learn about themselves beyond free training plans and unreachable results.

Learning about myself is probably the strongest motivation for trying to be a relatively good athlete. Yes, relatively, because I can't avoid factoring in my age, genetics, job, time, and all the other elements that divide a professional from an amateur.

However, this blog is not about me. What I'm interested in is everything that surrounds endurance sports, from physiology to heuristics, from statistics to anecdotes, involving mainly running, but also cycling and other activities. Throughout the years I've read many books and articles on these topics, and I feel the need to share my personal view. I want to write articles that I would read.

My career is totally separate from these topics, and there's no intention to build a business or promote a business via these articles. I might make some experiments, like including Google Ads or referral schemes, but they will remain that: an experiment to see how these mechanisms work, and not an attempt to grow a revenue.

Back to the various interpretations for "The Last Km": years ago, when I started running regularly and sporadically racing half marathons, I promised myself I'd never give up a tough training session or race on the last Km. This - I believe - caused a positive psychological effect: if I couldn't quit during the last Km it meant that all I had to do was finishing the next to last Km. Training sessions and races became a little shorter.

But most importantly that meant focusing on that last Km as a goal in itself; and one single Km, regardless of how exhausted your are and how slow your pace has become, it's anyway just about 1000 meters, and it's going to end pretty soon.

Another interpretation of "The Last Km" could be referring to the "last portion of training or race" I want to talk about. Or it can be seen as something slightly more metaphorical and refer to the goal of keeping sports in someone's life for as long as possible, in contrast with a playful activity belonging to the youth.

Whatever that really means, and knowing that what I'll write here will be more meaningful to myself than any other person, I have a little hope that somebody may find these topics interesting and learn something, as I do reading from others.

To the reader: welcome, and let's start.