It seems my running destiny was determined the day I won a 3 month online training voucher with a bloke called Coach Ray, who helps train beginning and recreational athletes. I had always run for fun, but a long term iliotibial band problem had stopped me running much distance in the last 25 years. Luckily just before winning my Qwik Kiwi voucher, I had also found a fantastic physio who finally sorted out my knee issue. It seemed my running stars had aligned. When Ray asked me what my goals were, I told him that I would quite like to run the Queenstown marathon, and so the training began.