Posts

Beauty of finishing the fourth

-
Image
It is raining again and the muddy trail gets soaked even more. My attention in a sharp focus on the tricky terrain rather than the charming scenery of the nature reserve Grybla where I am now in the middle of the race. Deep in the woods I don't care that the temperature descended close to the zero, but once I get to the open hilltops the wind bites me with frost. That's alright! Anyway, I should be more concerned about the broken lacing holes on my left shoe. The very first mental challenge of the day. My unfailing Hoka Mafate betrayed me badly while lacing them up tight, just before I got to the starting line. No matter what, my brains have already shifted to another diversions. I am keeping my fourth place on the course and I am resolved to push as such to the finish.     Hungry and hyped I entered for my first running contest of the 2024 year, ultraPUNKtrail Pyselsky kopecek of 81 km distance and 2 500 m elevation gain. The round course winds across the runnable hillocks of...
Post a Comment
Read more

The year of 2O23 in recap

-
Image
The start of the year was quite promising. I picked up on the established routine of a runner living in a big city, beating the pavements and roads in my neighbourhood, with some random chances to get out to the nearby woods from time to time. With the month of April came the left calf injury. Not a big issue, it seemed at its early stage. But the seemingly innocent calf tightness developed into a muscle inflammation and then into painful nuisance which sidelined me from a serious training for a couple of weeks. At odds with my preliminary plans, I toed the starting line of my first scheduled race, Valassky Hrb 55 km trail run, the last weekend of May not in a hundered-pro shape. The first 30 km went well, to my surprise. But the next, a bit more hilly part of the trail, played bad with my impaired fitness. I was humbly happy to clock the 17-minute-slower finish time than the year before and to grab the fourth place in my 45+ age category. Anyway, this was just a training race, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Not about running

-
The first post to this blog won't be about running. It will be about those „empty“ times when you cannot run. When the circumstances out of your will and control stop your trainings, mess with your plans to stock up well on your fitness before your oncoming A-race and prevent you from your natural daily diversion. That happens when you get ill or injured and have enough self-preservation instinct to shelve your running shoes for some time. All of us can testify that these times are more than frustrating. That feeling of a sudden void in our runner´s life cannot be got rid of, no matter what fillers you reach for. These times seem to defy your very essence, they are not a part of you the way you approach yourself. We all live in some sort of a running bubble. Early risings, workday morning runs, weekend long runs. And when the bubble gets a puncture, it sucks. Let's try to approach such moments with your runner's mentality. Do not deplore the situation, embrace it. Wha...
Post a Comment
Read more