From zero to 42

From zero to 42 is the name of a three-part series of the SWR from 2004, which was also broadcast on other ARD broadcasters and on arte .

The series focuses on the course of a year in which beginners are prepared for a marathon . The goal was to successfully participate in the New York City Marathon . The authors of the series were Rolf Schlenker as project manager as well as Marcus Vetter and Harold Woetzel .

17,000 interested people applied for the project, from which seven people were selected. These seven people were of different ages and very different physical constitution. What they all had in common was that they went into the project untrained. The project was medically supervised by Thomas Wessinghage .

Attendees

The individual participants were:

Dieter Schmid (34), manager of the Waldhaus private brewery in the southern Black Forest. He had been running a lot for a long time before, but had stopped a long time ago due to lack of time.
Anna Pal-Singh (52), housewife from Hamburg, three children. She weighed 90 kg and was 1.62 m tall and had never been involved in sports before.
Anna-Freda (46), housewife, three children. She weighed 59 kg and was 1.73 m tall.
Iris Gehrmann (44), dental assistant, two children.
Hans-Jürgen Mücke-Franke (61), architect from Berlin. He initially weighed 95 kg.
Michael Reufsteck (27), radio presenter at SWR3 . He weighed 90 kg and was 1.78 m tall.
Frank Hof (41), correctional officer from Remscheid. At the beginning he weighed 86 kg and was 1.70 m tall.

Course of the project

The participants first completed a performance test in Damp , where Wessinghage is director of a rehabilitation clinic. Some of the participants showed such poor fitness that some of them could not start running but had to start walking .

During the training, the participants made very different levels of progress. Iris Gehrmann was thrown back again and again by constant joint pain and illnesses, with Anna Pal-Singh the training hardly had any effect. She barely lost any weight and was unable to adjust her running rate to suit her training plans. Frank suffered a torn ligament, the participant Anna-Freda did not understand the training plans and ran distances at her own discretion. Mücke-Franke showed the greatest progress, he lost a large part of his excess weight within a very short time.

An interim test was planned after half a year. The participants took part in a half marathon ( Gutenberg Marathon in Mainz ) in which Ms. Pal-Singh collapsed at km 16 because she - just returned from a vacation in India - still suffered from bronchitis. Failing to achieve great success in running, she decided that she would continue walking.

All participants were able to get through the marathon in New York City , but sometimes only with problems. The participant Frank, previously one of the fittest participants, often had to stand still, plagued by side stitches and cramps. Ms. Gehrmann had pain while running, but was able to drag herself to the finish with walking breaks, medication and perseverance. Anna Pal-Singh was slow as a walker, but finished the marathon with success. Hundreds of other marathon participants followed behind this group.

Some participants continued their running training and in the meantime completed other marathons, published books about their experiences with the project and are much sought-after talk show participants.

Continuation of the project

In May 2004, the SWR continued the project and called on its viewers to do the same as the participants in the TV documentary. Prospective marathoners could download training plans via a virtual running club and were supervised by a team of experts. On May 8, 2005, 1,200 participants took part in the Gutenberg Marathon in Mainz. Around 700 of them completed their first marathon that day.

The project's website continued for a few years (at least 2007) and was one of the most popular running communities in Germany.