016 — Michaela Pilat
Personal Project
Hi Friends!
Today I want to announce a personal project I finished a few weeks ago and is now live on my website (Link below). I see you, the Written Thoughts subscribers, as my strongest supporters, so it is obvious to let you be the first who see and hear about it.
The initial Idea
In April this year, I knew I will be present at the World Mountain and Trail Running Championship in Austria, so I brainstormed some possible project ideas. One idea that came up was to follow and document the whole race of some athlete.
My knowledge about the professional side of trail running was close to zero, which meant I had to look out for athletes who seem interesting to me. I was not looking for some of the most popular athletes, but for the ones who have some interesting story and probably a great career ahead.
Coincidentally, I got informed about the participation of Michaela Pilat who lives in Upper Austria not far from my hometown. Since Upper Austria, especially where she lives, does not provide mountains and therefore not the ideal circumstances to train for a trail running event in high alpine terrain, she immediately caught my interest to get to know more about her.
Planning and first Interview
When I reached out to her and told her about my project idea, she immediately was excited, and so things started to get rolling.
Since I did not know much about her and my plan was to write an article combined with photographs which could be published in a magazine, we planned an Interview via Zoom in the middle of May.
To give the project a little more depth, I wanted to also document one of her training sessions and take some portraits ahead of the World Championship. Two weeks before the race, she supported her trainer to prepare the track for another trail running event in Maria Alm, Salzburg. It was the perfect opportunity to meet there to follow one of her training sessions in a better suited environment than in her hometown area.
WMTRC 2023
Before the day came, when Michaela competed in the Trail Short race, I thought about a rough plan on how to follow her from start to finish. For the public, a cheering bus was available, to hop on and off at various places along the track. I decided to use it to get around, as well as cable cars to reach sections of the mountains.
It worked out quite well, which meant I could get to five different places along the track. Sure, it was a hustle and in the end I felt like I had participated by myself, but isn’t this why we creatives do stuff like this?
In the finishing area, Michaela friends and family awaited her to celebrate the great result. I got myself into the media area to back up the photos from the day and even created a first selection which I could directly send to Michaela.
Final Thoughts
The event is now a while ago, and I gave myself enough time to finish the project so make it look like the way I envisioned it in the beginning. Sure, things went very different than I expected and planned, but this is ok and is a big learning for me and future projects.
It was the first time I did such a project from start to finish. I never reached out to someone completely unknown before, never did an interview before, never wrote an article before, and I was never part of the media team at an event before. Many first times for me — I learned a lot and gained experience in new areas, which I can use hands on in future projects.
Get outside your comfort zone and make your visions and dreams come true.
Yours,
Fabian
