Across the Alps 2012 or maybe later...

So that's it, my life can move on: The Cro-Magnon Extreme Race for 2013 and 2014 is called off, because the Mercantour Park Management has not allowed the passage of the race. I have already said goodbye to my dream. As a matter of fact this was surprisingly easy, as my plans would have collided with my parental duties and expectations, which have changed my outlook on the whole thing. Will I say goodbye to running alltogether? No, but yesterday I ran without a watch, without a training plan and it felt nice. I'll probably keep on jogging twice or thrice a week leisurely and I feel relieved that I don't have to go through this bone-crushing madness while focussing on raising my child.

What do I learn from this? I had a lot of fun running in 2011 and finishing the Neadertrail 25th will probably be the sportive feat of my life. Yet, my priorities have changed in 2012 and I now need more time for family life and living rather than the pursuit of a slightly obsessive singular dream. Also, my knees and my bones do feel older this year, there is no going around that.

To those who made pledges - please do continue to pursue your dreams and do consider changing them when they no longer fit into your life. The sense of loss one may feel is neighbouring a new beginning.

My left knee is starting to party again. This time it is celebrating a bit further to the right at a new location, exactly where I fell upon when I flew over my shoelaces two weeks ago (doo!). So no running since Thursday, tomorrow morning I will make a new try. I know, runners who can't propperly secure their shoelaces shouldn't complain about Circus Knee coming into town...

My mountain ultramarathon plans for 2012 were brushed aside earlier this year when a knee friction syndrom, quickly followed by the arrival of our firstborn daughter, added irrelevance and impossibility to an already pretty compulsive idea. I am a parent now and my running did not dare to mix with that role for a while, for many very good reasons. Our daughter is bringing wonder into our lives and more so the older she gets.
Today I was looking at old family pictures I had never seen. Looking at my parents when they were young I do profoundly wonder how it happened that they got old? I can recognise them on those pictures, I connect what I see to story I was told, but actually I do not know their lives before I was born. Undoubtably my daughter will marvel at my own childhood and youth pictures and ask herself questions one day. We travel very far in life.
Anyway, I was gonna talk about running. My dream race, the Cro-Magnon Extreme Race, was hence out of question, yet we did fly to France nevertheless in late June. I watched the runners arriving in Cap d'Ail, happy and exhausted after a gruelling full day of running. I truely missed running.
Yet, if at first the idea is not absurd, there is no hope for it. So I have decided to give the whole thing another chance and started running again in late July. I do physiotherapy for the knee, for the piriformis muscle (aka arse muscle), for the achilles tendon and it is really helping. My running sore spots are in check so far. This week I'm running ~55km and I hope to raise that to over 100km by the end of the year - if I stay healthy.
I believe that this is now or never for my running dreams and my chance for 2013: I'm on paternity leave for nearly a full year starting November. I bought myself a running Ferrari , with which we'll have a lot of fun. I'm continuing physiotherapy and looking for a running club.
Also, I have a race plan: 10km race in December, then January to March a Winter Running Series with 7, 14, 21km races and the Vienna Marathon in Spring, and finally, hopefully, if all goes well, inch' allah - the Cro-Magnon Extreme Race in June 2013? Pray for my knee, heel and arse...

Another pledge came in some time ago from a colleague of mine who famously draws elaborate skribbles on papers during lengthy meetings. She will illustrate the poetry collection of another colleague pledged through pledge three!

I'm back in training and have taken up listening to audiobooks while running. Oliver Sacks' "The Minds Eye", Philipp Roth's "The Human Stain" and currently Robert Musil's "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften" have accompanied me through dark and ugly winter evenings, wrapping me in a comfortable shell of story and endorphin. Next on the menu will be Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina". The selection is somewhat accidental and was so far totally dependent on what I chanced upon through friends or the internet.

Further recommendations are very welcome!

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

"The Great Beyond" by R.E.M.

I haven't posted any updates, but I have been running a lot in the last few months. More will follow - there's a new pledge, a marathon, running novels and many, many kilometers of road, wood and hills...


Thanks, Richard Yeomans, for the beautiful picture. Tonight it sometimes looked like this.

...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

Karaoke that doesn't suck? Hell yeah - some time ago I collected a pledge from C+S, dear friends who want to record an album together if I manage to run across the Alps. Not just a song, but an album! I would have been perfectly happy with a tiny, measly song, but no - they are going to make their own music!

So now we'll have a book and a record already. Niiiiice!

ps:
Picture was taken from here - thanks!

If you type in "ending the hiatus" in Google, you get 5.950 hits. Most of them refer to blogs and bloggers ending their hiatuses and engaging again with lifting, feminism, higher ed marketing, myspace or autism. In many of these blogs the blog post "Ending the Hiatus" is amongst the last of the blog posts. In German we call this "Panikblüte" - a last and final blossoming of nature and life during a dry spell before it all comes to an end.

"Hiatus" comes from the Latin word "hiare", meaning "to stand open, to yawn" and in English its plural is not only really, really "hiatuses", but it is also a nifty little word that can refer to a long syllable break between two vowels (like in the Tagalog word "Oo", meaning in English "yes"), a gap in geological strata, the opening in an organ, a vacation or break from work or the condition of having such a break.

You get the point: I had a hiatus and I haven't got many excuses. How I wish it would have been a gap in geological strata or the opening of an organ! But alas - it was merely the condition of having an idle, simple, very long and open yaaaaaaawn. Sometimes a yawn can take months to conclude.

My two prime excuses are a) having had to stop running in the end of July due to problems in the fricking Achilles tendon, and b) issues with the hip joint when I tried again in late August. Both of these experiences kind of got me down a little and for a while I pretty much stopped worrying about running all together and thought and did other things...

Now, some of you might think now that this is the end of my little self-deceiving megalomaniac plan of running across the Alps. Not so! No no no! I have simply taken some time to build up the motivation to build up the courage to build up my training again! Sometimes even a runner needs a good, open and long yaaaaawn to stretch the jawbones and sing along: You can manufacture a miracle!

Yes, I'm still sticking to the plan. Only now with less time and greater pressure to actually do the qualifying runs in 2011. So do give me some motivational speeches, emails and facebook messages, will ya!

Before you start yawning quite openly - here's the plan for December and early January:

1) Find a good orthopedic surgeon to prescribe me new orthotics.
2) Find a good fitness studio to help me build the trunk and support musculature.
3) Slowly start building the running again, supported by swimming and occasional water jogging. Today I already did a 8.6k run - wheeee...

June has gone, July has come. Several ideas for blogposts have been postponed and the sun has tanned me latino shoulders (standing out against the peaky white of my chest). The springtime of our metereological discontent has now become glorious summer by this sun of ours! Football is on, people flock to parks and public viewing, and my running routine is fitted in pleasantly according to the schedule of our pastime. You can always run home from a walk along the river or an afternoon at the pool!

There is more to report - a half-marathon, the results of the Cro-Magnon Race 2010, the fascinating story of my Achilles tendon and, and, and - all of this will follow in the next couple of days... So long!

The June data:

No of Runs: 14
Total Distance (km): 193,9
Ave speed (min/km): 5:59
Longest Run (km): 40,8

Edit: I was trying very hard to find a theme song for this month. After watching many youtube music videos I stumbled across this. It is just perfect ;-).

May? What May? Oh, you mean that February-like so-called "month" when people rumoured about some strange "yellow thing in the sky" somebody with holidays had actually seen far, far away in a southern country. As far as crappy Mays go, this one was number six in Vienna since 1841. 164 liters of water fell on every square meter and I have run through many of them. At some point I didn't care about weather anymore - I got totally soaked by cars going through puddles, did a rainy 25K mountain run with 1100m altitude change, had to run around flooded rivers and told myself that weather is overrated and rain good for the crops and that there isn't bad weather, only bad clothing. Yes, and then I caught a cold and had to stop running for a week.

Looking for an adequate song to describe these borderline metaphysical experiences, I found a slightly nerve-wrecking 80s thing by guy called Max Werner. Surely, I have had my share of rain in May! I feel nervous and itchy and need to and shall run again today! Yesterday Summer has finally arrived here - with open air cinema, people flooding the parks and dancing in the streets, hmmm...

...but now for the data on my merry, merry month of May:

No of Runs: 18
Total Distance (km): 186,7
Ave speed (min/km): 6:01
Longest Run (km): 32,3

One nice side effect of my current training regime is that I swim more often. Amazing! Today I even felt somewhat like a fish - which is very unusual for me. I only choked on chlorinated water once or twice. Or thrice. Which would make me a special needs fish, BUT - nevertheless a fish. I used to be a wood grouse - who according to urban legend wood grouses even drown in rain - and now I'm growing gills...

Blubb!

ps:
please click to picture above to feed me and my friends!

Adventure get's more interesting the more people get involved. So when I just told my old friend P.S. about this crazy plan of mine, he also shared a dream of his: He always wanted to write a book. In fact, he agreed to finally write this book if I manage to finish the Cro-Magnon in less than 24 hours. Not a pamphlet, a book. Not an essay, a book.

Knowing P.S. as somebody who tends to keep his word this bet will greatly boost my moral during those long boring winter runs - not simply because I am interested in what he might be coming up with, but because of a simple idea:

If I just finish the race in a day, a book shall be written.

Nice thought.

Any other bets anybody?

Every month I will post my training results, so my current training mileage will be public. And if I sit on the sofa instead of scuffling the streets, people will know, so I gotta run! Haha - it's a catch!

In order to make the whole exercise even more interesting I shall also hide songs and links randomly here and there, like easter eggs. So in 2012 we won't only have crossed the Alps, but we'll also have done so on one gigantic two-year egg hunt. Hannibal's bones shall shuffle their feet in awe...

Oh and I forgot - the "Hopeless Feats Illustrated" will be cited for comments from time to time. For those more interested in where I steer my training. If "steer" is the right word here...

But here's the training, April come she will:

No of Runs: 12
Total Distance (km): 120,7
Ave speed (min/km): 6:24
Longest Run (km): 25,3

I wanted a challenge to get my arse back off the chair. Two or three years ago I had been a mediocre runner of marathons. In 2007, after a painful and embarrassing five-hour "run" up and down the hills of Istanbul, I stopped running and took up couch-potatoing.

More recently, while thoughtfully weighing the pros and cons of a life eating yummy unhealthy things on our comfy livingroom sofa I realized that somehow I needed to trick myself off the sofa if I was to achieve something grand and manly in my lifetime. Nothing against five-hour marathons, but I, emperor of the livingroom sofa, needed something bigger! Other people had discovered the North Pole, sailed around the world or crossed the Alps, feats that had fed the imagination of whole generations and I had stumbled through Istanbul... -- "hang on", I thought, "I love the Alps!!" And right there, smiling like a Himalayan king, the cold wind of adventure touched my cheek - right where the pillow had left its mark...

Chance has it that there is indeed a single-stage race across the Alps - the Cro-Magnon Extreme Race. This year, it is 112km long with all in all 5700m altitude climbs. In 2008 it had been won in 9 hrs and 31 minutes by Dachhiri-Dawa Sherpa, born in 1969 in 2700m altitude in a small village just around the corner from Mt Everest. Some 19 hrs after him brave Pietro Bernardo, the last of the 340, made it across the finish line. In 2009 the race was called off due to bad weather and 1.2m snow. Wow!!

If 340 people could do it, why not me? If I'm still young enough for a crazy sportive feat, why not now? If this isn't a chance to - realistically - do something actually pretty impossible, then what is?

So last 7 April 2010 I started to run. Realistically, I need two years training. This blog shall serve as my training diary.