Archive for the ‘Running Locations’ Category

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Half Baked Running Events

Friday, August 20th, 2010
Olomouc Half-Marathon, Jana and Darren

Olomouc Half-Marathon, Jana and Darren

Recently I ran in the Olomouc Half-Marathon in the Czech Republic with the wonderful Jana (see the cute blonde on the left). It was her first “half” so I made a training event out of it. I’m going to make a point of running more events with friends of various running levels, it reminds me to have fun. We still make reference to the dreaded “BFA” that passed us at the end of the race.

In running an event for “fun” I can look at Olomouc objectively and see that no matter how well panned events are there’s always the potential for a “gong show” ending. Imagine training for months, perhaps even years. All of your effort is focused on a single event, it’s your life. Many, many people and factors are involved including the all mighty dollar. The big day arrives, an hour of running later, it’s all over. Crossing the finish line with a fantastic sense of accomplishment, it appears you’ve won the race. For Stephen Kibet and Stephen Tum, both of Kenya, heartache followed shortly after as they were disqualified. They had followed a media truck off of the course in the middle of the race resulting in a disqualification. If ever there was a time to hate the media this is it.

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Posted in Calgary, Canadian Derby Edmonton Marathon, Edmonton, Loop the Lake, Running Locations | No Comments »

Running can grow on you

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010
Tinea Versicolor example on chest

Tinea Versicolor example on chest

A typical run in Taipei starts at 5am for me. The sun is rising and its already 30C on it’s way to 36C. As consistent as the sunrise and the temperature, the amount of sweating has become a part of the training process. It turns out that hot and humid sweat are also a ripe environment for anything living, including little creatures on my back.

Within 5 minutes I’m soaked. Stopping for a quick break or stretching at the end of a run results in a puddle around my feet. I’ve never lost weight through sweat at this rate before. The basic breakdown is 2kg per hour of running as a maximum before dehydration and heat stroke become a potential issue, I consistently loose upwards of 4kg.

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Posted in Long Run, Taipei, Training | 2 Comments »

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 »

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 »

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