Across the Alps 2012 or maybe later...

In yet another pledge another old friend of mine decided to run a half-marathon until 2013 if ever I get across the Alps next June. The first running pledge, good! There should be more of those!

ps: Thank you Rock n'Roll Half-Marathon through downtown LA for the picture...

Despite my lack of running and in ignorance of my annoying hamstring I am still collecting pledges. One old friend of mine came up with a nice one: She will either found her own NGO or she'll have a baby. Only which will it be?!?

ps: Thank you, anonymous baby, for your picture.

Well, I have a problem in my right hamstring and I haven't done much running recently. Today I ran again the first time in months and - it didn't go so well. My doctors' appointment is only in two weeks and yes I should have gone earlier and no, I haven't done enough stretching. I don't know what this all means, but today I resolved to train no matter what, which means I'll spend many a boring hour doing water jogging in the local public swimming pool...

Running 56.4km through the mountains is actually less terrible than it sounds, especially now, three days after the most exhausting 9:19 hours of my life.
Exhausting, yes, but also beautiful - running all alone high above the Cote d'Azur sunset, ocean-liners seemingly floating in the sky somewhere far down below, or coming up a hill into the wild and empty scenery of the Mercantour Nature Reserve, then marching up soft forest trails or neck-breakingly rushing down steep mountain slopes of loose gravel and boulders and speeding down swift cartways with long, efficient strides and finally getting all lost at night looking for the next trail marker but falling out of the mountain into the arms of these kind and gentle souls at the refreshment points - all of these impressions I will remember - and want to experience again.
The Neander-Trail is a small race. Like little people having been thrown across that breathtaking landscape by some fearsome ancient god - whom they now worship by running without knowing the reason why - the 120 runners quickly scatter and soon you are running all alone amidst all that beauty and self-sufficiency.
It makes me feel happy and priviledged to have experienced that. It is not the sense of "look-I-have-won-the-olympics-and-now-wear-golden-hotpants" kind of achievement, but something slightly more modest. It is something somehow new, like I'm looking out to the other side of an experience and I can see, errh - stuff:
Not simply am I now qualified for the Cro-Magnon Race next year, but also - I felt good running until the end. Suddenly my crazy plan is possible. I now know I can do it. I just need to keep up what I'm doing - gently pushing my training limits only a little bit further yet, without becoming an obsessive nutcase, compulsive sociopath or cripple!
So - a week ago I was still joking about how impossible this all is, but now I actually came in 25th of a tough mountain ultra-marathon. I started fairly slowly and got lost four times along the way, so I could have made it even a bit faster.
I wouldn't have thought it would go so well and actually I don't remember a sense of achievement like this ever since at university I talked a rowdy drunkard into giving me 20 quid for my crappy old bike he had just kicked into transportation netherworld.

So, what did I learn? Actually, this only shows that everybody else is also putting their pants on one leg at a time. And I, within the next year, shall put on the other leg of my Cro-Magnon pants - the significantly longer one. At least I now know how to do that!

A colleague of mine
said without rhyme
"if you do that thing
I shall make my own poetry collection."

And hope I do that she shalt!

...my training diary of the last few months? Very briefly: January was good, February and early March pathetic, late March ok, April somewhat lazy and May good again...
June will be a blast and the 25th a real test, since I'll be running the Neander-Trail, the smaller sibbling of the Cro-Magnon (the one I'm doing all this for...). The Neander-Trail 2011 is basically the second half of the Cro-Magnon 2012, i.e. it has "only" 56,4km with 2800m positive and 4500m negative altitude change. I need to finish it in order be allowed to the Cro-Magnon next year. My modest goal for the Neander-Trail this year is hence "qualifying". Any time below eight hours I would consider a triumph...

But here is what happened in the last few months:

A half-marathon in late March I ran in a fairly fast 1:36:41, only to be grounded again by the Vienna Marathon in the middle of April, which I finished in a mediocre 3:40:47. I started too fast and had done too few long jogs - stupid beginners' faults.

Anyway, since May my training is doing fairly well: I have started to run home from work through the hills above Vienna. Running up and down hills is a real game changer, as the strain on the connective tissue is lessened. Hence, last week I was able to ran a total of 100km, something which would have probably brought me into an ICU a few months ago. On recent Sundays I ran 33,3km with +-1300m altitude change up an down a local hill, confuzzling sunlight strollers and betroddling able amblers. People's faces change from ignorance to a rainbow coloured from disbelief to ridicule after you run past them for a nth time. Looking at them you wonder when exactly you became a lunatic and why it feels so normal...

Anyway, lunatic schmulatic - here are the nerdy facts:

January

No of Runs: 18
Total Distance (km): 269,7
Longest Run (km): 30,9

February

No of Runs: 5
Total Distance (km): 42,0
Longest Run (km): ~15

March

No of Runs: 15
Total Distance (km): 233,3
Longest Run (km): 30,5

April

No of Runs: 9
Total Distance (km): 151,9
Longest Run (km): 42,2

May

No of Runs: 17
Total Distance (km): 308,7
Longest Run (km): 33,3


Credit:
Past these hopeful flowers I will hopefully hop hoping I'll make the last few kms on the 25th. Taken @ "Tete de Chien" by Francesco Berlucchi close to the finish...

Recently one thing has started happening. It's like through running I'm starting to get a look further down the funnel of this soul of mine. Or some such thing.
What I mean is: What Haruki Murakami says about running is mostly true for me too.
Today for instance, as I was blasting through the night, propelled by music, I felt really very genuine and happy. It was a profound feeling that is still going on until now.
Three times I had to replay this song for its refrain, for its grasp on life and the happiness I felt. Wings seemed a real possibility, life a raw landscape with me running right through its middle...

I'm pushing an elephant up the stairs
I'm tossing up punchlines that were never there
Over my shoulder a piano falls
Crashing to the ground
I'm breaking through
I'm bending spoons
I'm keeping flowers in full bloom
I'm looking for answers from the great beyond

...look at this guy: The Coati is more commonly known as a "nosebear" and it makes for pleasant surprises when you see it roaming the woods. Like the pelican, giraffe or sea-horse it is a genuinely humerous animal. Coatis usually appear in groups of, say, a dozen individuals and they stick their noses into everything, swaying it left and right like a metal detector. They look young, sociable and curious, possibly bored but definitely with too much time on their hands (or up their nose). I would not trust any of them in a chinese pottery store.

Yes, escaping the runny noses of wintertime Vienna we spend a beautiful holiday in tropical Costa Rica! Between slothing it out in a hammock, straying through rain forests and omnivorous visits to open-air restaurants, running Coati-style all over the place was one of my favorite pasttimes. Running in a new place is great, as it provides you with adventure, serendipity as well as a physical and geographic sense for where you are. Running along empty beaches, for instance is a great way to realise the non-existance of "empty"- crabs frantically running away, birds running back and forth with the waves, Iguanas moving like living statues - all this multitude, strangeness and change of scenery!

I did not actually count any distance, but just now when I estimated my December training data I was surprised: Very slowly I ran more than ever. Getting lost and following the nose is key! Do the Coati!

December:

No of Runs: 18
Total Distance (km): ~202
Ave speed (min/km): ~6:55
Longest Run (km): ~25,5