Across the Alps 2012 or maybe later...

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...

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!

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!

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?

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.