From Zero to 3:53: A First-Marathon Learning Story

Our Director of Strategic Business Development, Dmytro Reutskyi, finished his first marathon on May 17, 2026 in Kyiv at 3 hours 53 minutes. Ten months earlier, he agreed to run his first half-marathon over coffee with our CTO, Oleksandr Trofimov, and then quietly turned the conversation into a methodical learning project. The journey to a sub-four-hour debut at the MHP Run4Victory is a small story about prep, planning, and the kind of curiosity that quietly shapes everything else we do here.

Last summer, the idea showed up at the coffee machine

Dmytro is no stranger to training. He played football in his student years, spent time in the gym, plays tennis, and had been deep in Thai boxing for the four years before this. The routine was already there. The sport was different.

What changed was a casual idea from Oleksandr, our CTO: let’s run a half-marathon in Kyiv this October. Dmytro said yes without thinking about it.

That was late July 2025. He had about ten weeks, no running base, and what he calls “some sort of plan I clicked through on my Garmin.” He ran what the watch told him to run and got on a night train to Kyiv on race weekend.

He finished. The time was respectable: 1 hour 54 minutes. But when he looked back at the data, change to he realized that he had spent most of the heart rate zone where almost no half-marathon should ever be run.

“If someone told me a year ago that I would run a marathon, I wouldn’t have believed them.”

For most people, that race would have been the end of the story. For Dmytro it was the opening of a new topic to learn properly.

“I always have to learn something new. Before that it was business school, then sleep, nutrition, new technologies, trends. I am constantly learning new things.”

From self-coaching to a real training plan

The first thing he did was look for the best Ukrainian-language source on endurance sport he could find. He landed on a YouTube channel called Team404, watched everything they had, and signed up for their educational course.

The course came with a personal mentor Karyna Yevtushenko, a professional triathlete. By December 2025 he had decided to keep training under supervision. Together with his mentor they built a six-month plan with one goal: be ready to run a full marathon in May.

After that, in his words, “everything changed.” Preparation looked different. Recovery looked different. Pace work, strength work, sleep, nutrition, taper week, race-day fueling: every piece was deliberate, measured, and adjusted week by week.

The numbers told the story. In Lviv this spring, Dmytro ran a half-marathon at 1:40, fifteen minutes faster than his October debut, and he says he was not pushing.

“When the process is built scientifically, you see on the graphs how your well-being and your results improve. It becomes a habit you do not want to give up.”

Building marathon prep around business trips and family life

Running for four to ten hours a week is a real schedule commitment, especially for someone whose calendar is built around the DACH region, client meetings across Europe, and a family at home.

“I came to running not from the couch. After 25, I started doing sport more actively. My routine was already set up for it. I just had to change the sport.”

He also discovered that running travels better than most hobbies. No gym membership to negotiate abroad. No reservation slot to wait for. A pair of shoes and the route around the hotel, and the training block continues.

“I integrated this into business trips. You can run anywhere. It was even easier to fit in than my previous sports.”

Plan A, Plan B, Plan C: the part most first-timers skip

Ten days before the Kyiv start line, Dmytro picked up a small injury.

For most first-time marathoners, that is the moment the wheels come off mentally. The plan you have built your entire identity around for six months suddenly does not fit. This is where Dmytro’s BD instincts showed.

“When you prepare for your first big target start, you have a plan for how the race will go. In a lot of cases, it never goes the way you wrote it. Something will be different. That is why it is smart to approach with plan A, plan B, plan C.”

He had a “maximum plan” he had been chasing the whole block, a Plan B that was still more ambitious than his goals at the start (his phrase: “appetite came with eating”), and a Plan C if the injury surfaced early. With his coach, he spent the final ten days on specific exercises targeting the weak link.

The race itself rewarded the layered planning. The injury held up. He came through 35 kilometers strong, with about 13 to 15% of the distance left when the niggle finally announced itself, and finished in 3:53.

Anyone who has built a B2B deal pipeline will recognize the structure. You do not commit to one outcome and pray. You build a primary path, a contingency, and a floor. And then you keep going.

The race: a cause that matters and a Ukrainian record

The 2026 MHP Run4Victory is in its third year as a charity marathon. One hundred percent of registration fees and donations go to Ukrainian service members and veterans rehabilitating at the Protez Foundation and the MSC Dnipro Medical Center.

On May 17 in Kyiv, more than a hundred runners from Team404 lined up for the full marathon. According to the club, all hundred-plus finished, setting a Ukrainian record for the largest contingent from a single running club to complete a marathon. Dmytro was one of them.

What this taught us about how we work

We did not set out to write a leadership post. But re-reading the interview, the same patterns keep showing up that we look for on the strategic side of the business.

Learn the topic, not just the task. Dmytro did not buy a generic plan; he took the time to learn how marathon training actually works. We see the same pattern when our BD team enters a new vertical: they read the field before they sell into it.

Hire expertise when expertise is what you need. Self-coaching to a half-marathon is fine; self-coaching to a 3:53 marathon in ten months is not. Knowing when to bring in someone who has done it before is one of the most useful instincts a leader can develop.

Plan in layers. Plan A, Plan B, Plan C is not paranoia; it is preparation that respects how reality actually behaves.

Treat recovery as part of the system. The training block included specific protocols for mobility, sleep, and active recovery. The same is true of how our highest-performing teams operate.

“The methodical approach, the recovery, everything done properly: that is when preparing for a race becomes a real pleasure. You enjoy not just the race, but the preparation.”

“Endurance sport focuses you not just in training, but in work, in energy. It adds a lot of energy to those areas of life.”

What’s next

Asked about future races, Dmytro mentioned he’s planning a fall international start, probably in Germany alongside one of our DACH partners. The longer-term ambition is the Six Star Finisher medal for the six World Marathon Majors. Entries are mostly lottery-driven, and the field is competitive, but as he put it:

“Whoever seeks, finds.”

We will be holding a finish-line poster the next time.