Run, Koper, run

Last year I signed up for the Chimera 100 miler . You may ask why the hell would I do such a thing and I guess the simplest answer is: well, I didn't quite know what I was getting myself into. I trained, had some setbacks because of the injury in the San Francisco marathon but I went for the race and, from the perspective of one year, did rather well : I had to stop after 70 miles because my right knee had enough, but other than that I was in high spirits and determined to finish (I considered walking but 30 miles is a hell of a walk ;). Fast forward few months and I again signed up for Chimera, which will take place in 2 days. The excuse of not knowing what I'm getting myself into does not work this time around; I knew exactly what I was doing when I signed up. So why? Am I a masochists? Perhaps, to a point :). But I think the real answer is: I like running. I like challenges. And what better running challenge than running 100 miles? Btw. if there are any non-runners (or s...

Another race that I did 7 weeks ago. I did not even make notes after the race, as I often do, so I'm writing this from memory... and as it is very faulty, well... This was a race that I probably should not have been running. Only two weeks after Mount Diablo , I was still tired from that tough race and my feet were still recovering (blisters). But, I felt like racing, Yohann easily agreed to join me, so there it was. With 1,770m of total elevation gain, I was hoping it'd be easier than Diablo and its 2,435m. I was hoping for a 5h finish. This was an unusual run for Coastal Trails, as 50k was the only distance. Normally the bulk of people is doing shorter distances with only a handful of brave souls going for 50k :D. But in this race that was the only distance and that meant that the 100 people that lined at the start all meant business. Also it was point to point, which is great (much more fun than going in loops), except we had to get up really early to drive to Rodeo Be...

This race was almost 2 months ago. My memory of it is not very fresh, so this is going to be a lousy race report but let me try. I woke up super early, as usual was worried of not having enough for breakfast so ended up stuffing myself completely. Not good. The drive goes smoothly but then there's a long queue for registration and for restrooms so I end up rushing to the start. Yohann is there with me. If you look at the map of the race 50k consisted of a climb to the top of Mt Diablo, then a large loop, then another climb and down to the start. So essentially two climbs. Two big climbs. In fact, Coastal Trail Runs have 17 different courses for their races throughout the year (I did 10 of them, few multiple times) and out of those 17 Mount Diablo is the one with biggest total elevation gain; 2435 meters overall. It's a brutal race as we were soon to discover. We started together with Yohann, at some point I was setting the pace but he was just few meters behind me. Before l...