Seriously - this is how I started running

Patrick's post posted the question, and when I remember I just have fun about it.
Argentina is a football country, we all play it at school, secondary school, grown ups, and so on. My dad plays week in and week out with his mates, even though he's got a bad back. Even though I was not super talented for the sport, I played for some time with my friends but never seriously. I did play basketball for some time, but I wasn't super talented either. We trained to play basketball and that was the first time many of us were introduced to training schedules, routines and specificity. After moving to the big smoke I left all sports aside and picked up swimming in our last year in Buenos Aires.
Many friends would go out running, but I found it boring as, and never got to run over 3km without questioning what the hell was I doing running.

So, at 25 I had never been "out for a run" outside the basketball training, which was usually around the court. It was the winter of 2006 when I decided to enter the 1/4 marathon in Auckland, which was 3 months away. We've been out for a few runs with my flatmate Julian (out of boredom) and that winter I pinned together a training plan (run 2 or 3 times a week) to make it 10km. I entered the race never ever having run more than 8km and I was still not fully convinced by running as a sport.

The following year I started swiming even more seriously, and entered the half marathon. That winter the runs got longer and longer and I even managed to do a 17km run before the race. That was when I started not taking the Ipod with me and actually run to run and not to listen to music.
I guess I had some talent because I did a sub 50min for my first ever 10km and a 1.45 for my first ever half marathon. Finishing the big run gave me the confidence to give triathlons a go.
Over the past 3/4 years it has grown on me to the point where the mileage has increased ten or twentyfold. And I even got my lovely wife hooked.