Archive for June, 2010

Surviving the Silva Nortica Marathon

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
Silva Nortica sign

Silva Nortica - Run this way!

42 kilometers, an impressive distance considering most people use their car to drive to the corner store. Often promoted as “flat and fast“, city marathons attract thousands, sometime tens of thousands of participants. Then there’s the cross country marathon, again 42 kilometers but the terrain varies greatly. With the addition of water crossings, forest trails, rocky paths and of course the beloved hills, it’s difficult to compare. They’re still called “marathons” due to the distance but the effort necessary is in a whole difference league. The city marathons look like a trip to the corner store after running a cross country event.

The Silva Nortica Marathon was my third marathon and my first cross country race. I recently completed my second marathon at the Prague International Marathon. Read my entry on the Prague event to get an understanding of where I’m at in my running career. In summary, I’m still very new to the process, not an absolute “newbee” but still a lot to learn.

Silva Nortica Marathon Map with Krumlov Marker

Silva Nortica Marathon Map with a marker to Krumlov, the city Jani introduced me to as the short residence of the great painter Egon Schiele in 1911.

The Silva Nortica Marathon is actually the “little” run of the event. At the same time, a 85 kilometer ultra marathon event does a loop covering both sides of the Czech and Austrian border. I spent all of my time in Austria with the end of the race at the border crossing into the Czech Republic.

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Posted in Czech Republic, Injuries, Races, Running Locations, Silva Nortica, Training | 2 Comments »

Running Bugs Me

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

Chicken invented endorphinBugs, they’re everywhere. As we run, our mouths wide open, scooping up as much air as humanly possible, bugs find the pipeline that starts with our mouth irresistible. Interestingly most people have an issue with bugs. At first sight most go into a fit of rage, jumping and waving our hands typically ending with the death of the creature. Why are we so afraid?

As runners, we encounter many of our winged friends. Some simply bounce off of our foreheads while other less fortunate actually enter our bodies. Intentional or not, our instinct is to get them out as fast as possible. On a rational level, why do we resist a little added protein to our diet? We eat flesh all the time. The ideal of catching fish and eating it soon after is considered perfection by many. The fact that the fish probably enjoyed eating it’s favourite bug a few minutes before it found our hook doesn’t seem to be an issue.

Running in Alberta, the roads at dusk always left my chest and face covered in little black flies. Running too slow gave them an opportunity to land and indulge in some of my blood. I think of it as a great motivator, run or be eaten. With my mouth open, I even had the opportunity to sample a few of them before I became dinner. I think of it as the cycle of life.

There is always “the one that got away“. True to any self respecting fish tale, my comparable bug story involved a hornet at English Bay in Vancouver last summer. Towards the end of a long run, fatigue running high, I could see a bug in the distance. Flying perpendicular to me, our paths were sure to cross. In slow motion, the bug turned in a wide arch heading strait towards me. My mouth open, what are the chances it would fly strait in? Apparently 100%, to my shock my head was filled with a buzzing sound.

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Posted in Injuries | 2 Comments »

Hills to Run

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

I love running hills. There just happens to be a few races that have hills. Just about every cross country race has hills and the ultra-marathons (anything over 42km) seems to have them by default. If you happen to have masochistic tendencies it helps as well.

Silva Nortica marathon 2010 start

Silva Nortica marathon 2010 start. I'm the one in yellow with the blue cap.

Perspective seems like a good thing to mention in this discussion. When I say “hills”, perhaps some think of little ups and downs on the road. I mean elevation changes in general. Elevation changes over the course of a race, typically measured in hundreds of metres, sometimes thousands. It’s rare that a city marathon has even the slightest elevation change with event sales pitches talking of “flat and fast”. There are a few hilly road marathons that I have on my wish list but in general it’s all about going as fast as possible. Hills don’t lend well to a fast race.

I recently ran my first cross country marathon, the Silva Nortica. My finish time was 5:02 which put me very close to the back of the pack of 20 contestants. Something to note about cross country and ultra races in general, they’re small. There’s often not a lot of fane fare to the events and not many contestants.  Five hours is not impressive in the city marathon realm where they’re typically tens of thousands of runners, actually it’s not impressive in cross country either but still a milestone for me. In my limited experience, I would call Silva Nortica the hardest and the most proud of a race I’ve run to date.

42 kilometers across the Czech and Austrian country side in the Silva race made my last marathon, the Prague International Marathon seem easy. The distance was the same but the effort necessary wasn’t even close. I’ll provide details on my Silva Nortica run in a later post, for now I’ll describe it simply as “kick ass” in more ways than my bum is willing to mention at this time.

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Posted in Czech Republic, Hills, Prague International Marathon, Races, Running Locations, Silva Nortica | 1 Comment »

Fingers and Toes, My Running Casualities

Thursday, June 10th, 2010
Footxray

Foot X-Ray

I like to call it “full contact running“; it’s the toll that running takes on our extremities. Who knew that running would be so hard on those little bits of our body that help us wander down our running paths? According to Martin King of Independent Minds, there’s 41 280 steps in running a typical marathon. That’s 20 640 “thumps” to our toes. If your shoes fit poorly, even in the slightest way the results are typically a blister, perhaps some blood or a toe nail turning black and ultimately falling off.

To the casual observer, the sight of a broken finger or blacked or missing toenail seems extreme. To a runner, it’s all just a part of the process. A process that’s been in the making for millions of years.

Relative to other primates, we have very short toes. They might even seem useless as we can’t pickup or hold anything with them. Apparently, having short toes does make us exceptional runners. But what’s the point of being able to run when our top speed still makes us pray to some of the other running animals in the Savannah – Leopards run upwards of 80km/hr over short distances.

Born to Run

Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

According to the story told in “Born to Run“, a recent book by Christopher McDougall, the secret to our short toes and general appetite for meat is our ability to sustain running over great distances. We have a unique ability to keep ourselves cool and thus can run far greater distances than all of our potential prey. We simply run our food down. Sure, they sprint away but after a few repeats the human, covered in sweat, runs up to the poor antelope who’s passed out from exhaustion and we simply “bop” them over the head – steak anyone?

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Posted in Czech Republic, Injuries, Prague International Marathon, Silva Nortica, Why I Run? | 1 Comment »

Prague International Marathon 2010

Saturday, June 5th, 2010
Prague International Marathon, 2010

Prague International Marathon, 2010 - Looking a little worst for wear, knee bleeding but still going strong.

I’ve been slow posting my experience of running the Prague International Marathon. I do have a few excuses but in general it’s more the result of just wanting to write about new stuff, thoughts and where my mind currently is wandering in the running realm. Perhaps the most justifiable excuse, the race took place only a week after arriving in the Czech Republic from Taiwan. The jet lag was killing me combined with a general lack of sleep. For future reference, I hope to give myself at least a few weeks in an event location before my race. The results and general “happiness level” are certainly reflected in the results after an adjustment of sleep and finding a new rhythm.

Prague was my second running of a full marathon. Truth be told, my it was my first real running of the event. Last year, at my first, the Toronto Water Front Marathon, I took Carla’s advice and ran specific distances with walking breaks – two kilometers with 30 second walks. It was wise advice as I was uncertain about how to run 42km. My experience and training to date were at most in the 30km range, I was unclear about my pacing and the proverbial “wall” that many talk of.

On the ?? Bridge, close to our hotel and on the way to the start of the Prague International marathon.

On the Charles Bridge, close to our hotel and on the way to the start of the Prague International marathon.

Soon after the half marathon cut off in the Toronto race, participants started to “drop like flies“. People were on the sidewalks puking and rolling around in pain – no exaggerations, really! I certainly wasn’t feeling that bad but it did plant some fear in me. I was wandering off into the unknown, my only goal was to finish, with grace and style. There was no way I was going to puke!

My Toronto Waterfront, 2009 run ended up being too much on the conservative side. I finished the race at 4:29:20 with a smile on my face and no real sense of pain or pushing myself. Within hours, I was feeling 100% and ready to go running again?!? A very different experience from my first half-marathon a year earlier at the same event, more on this later.

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Posted in Czech Republic, Injuries, Prague International Marathon, Races | 1 Comment »