Run, Koper, run

The road to ArcArc of Attrition... the good ol' Arc... Admittedly I have some history with that race. There's some love. There's some resentment. We definitely bonded over the years though. This love-hate affair started in 2017 when I tried it for the very first time without quite knowing what I was getting myself into. Winter race, very technical trails, lots of ups and downs... I wasn't ready for any of it and had to throw in the towel halfway through, being borderline injured. Then came 2018. I was very determined to get my revenge from previous year's DNF (my second one ever). I was better prepared and I did fight for longer but after 70 miles I was done again, this time busting my shins. TrainingAnd so 2019 was supposed to be the year. I promised myself to train hard and come race day to show it who's da boss! I was always the happy-go-lucky kinda runner, never really following any structured training or plan but just running for the joy of it. So I…

Arc of Attrition 2017Long time no see, huh? First a quick recap. 2016 was a year of no-running (long story...). Almost literally. Only by the end of the year I decided to go back at it and came up with a crazy idea of signing up for the Arc of Attrition, a 100-mile long, winter-time coastal race in Cornwall. Yeah, not exactly smart. I guess the only thing I have in my own defense is that I didn't fully know what I was getting myself into... With less than three months to get ready and little to no running prior to that I had to ramp up very quickly. And I did. And so I got injured. Less than three weeks before the race. Yeah... It seemed the race was over before it started. My physio was definitely more convinced of that than I was. However, I recovered surprisingly quickly and went from barely being able to walk to feeling completely fine in time for the race. I decided to give it a go. Gingerly... Gingerly my ass. The plan was to walk. At a fast clip I figured out I'…

Done with running?... again?After an unsuccessful attempt at a 100-mile ultra-marathon in 2013 I proclaimed that I may be done with running.This wasn't so. Yes, true, I pretty much stopped running for 3 months following that race but then I came back at it. With a vengeance. And I got it in 2014 when I raced, this time successfully, in the same bloody race.So this time around I was much more careful to pronounce the end of my running career. However, it's now been more than one year from that infamous race and not only my appetite for running didn't come back; I essentially stopped running altogether.There are many aspects that contributed to that state of affairs, not least of them the fact that I moved to central London, where hitting the trails is, ekhm, substantially more difficult than in California. And once used to the trails, hitting asphalt somehow isn't that tempting anymore. So this blog post might just be the case of me trying to convince myself of somethin…

Once again I'm writing with a 2 month delay, so, as my memory isn't too good, this post will be heavy on the photos and light on the words... at least, relatively speaking.In August I was going for a week to Cambridge, MA for a work summit. My first thoughts were not about how to prepare for this trip work-wise. My very first thought was: I'm going to U.S., I need to visit one of the national parks!The summit was starting on Monday, so I could go on the weekend and have 1 or 2 days somewhere in the wilderness. And so the planning begun. I could not find any famous/interesting park in the direct vicinity of Boston. But then I came across Telegraph's list of America's 20 best national parks (I love top-X lists) with Acadia National Park on the list. 5h drive away it wasn't exactly close but I decided to go for it anyway.After a direct flight from London I landed in Boston around 1pm, quickly got myself to the car rental and by 2pm was on my way. There was some t…

Disclaimer: I'm writing this 4 months after it happened so this is just a rough approximation of what happened on that day ;)It was decided. I was moving to London. With all the excitement and lots of things to look forward to, I'll be very honest: there were things I knew I'll be missing from California. And on the very top of that list was the beautiful nature and trails that I only begun to explore in the past 2+ years.So when the date was coming up — and it was coming up fast — I knew I had to do something special for my usual weekend trip series. My usual choice would be a long run but, seeing as I hardly did any running in the past six months, practically since Chimera, somehow this didn't seem like such a great idea.Instead I set my sight on cycling. Past 2 months I did some training on 2 wheels. Nothing too crazy, mostly just one long ride per week, but hopefully enough to give me a chance of surviving such an adventure, as opposed to getting fried after 2 hou…

Or: How does it feel like to run for 30 hours straight.I think the above subtitle pretty much summarizes what this post is going to be about. But let's start at the beginning. Few days before the race. For most race reports I try to reconstruct chronologically what happened. This time it was such a long endeavor that there are gaps in my memory that stretch for hours. So instead, I'll try to talk about different aspects of this race, in short sections, only roughly sticking to the timeline of the race. There we go.On traditional pre-race bad luckBefore almost every race things tend to go wrong. It happens so much that I even came to the conclusion that it's not that things go wrong, it's just that I'm more acutely tuned to problems and I notice them more. Screw this theory. Things do go very wrong before races. If you don't believe then listen to what happened to me on Thursday and then tell me that I'm wrong.During the day I went to wash my car and the day…

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 shorter …

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 Beach in tim…

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 long he…

Once again I was away from the blog for a long, long time. Let me try to pick up where I left off and finish writing about the last day in Lassen.After the second active day I was really tired and thought I'd sleep like a baby. Not so. Actually I had a really terrible night, mostly because of my stuffy nose. When I woke up in the morning I felt really tired.Still, I quickly finished up packing and started driving towards Butte Lake where I was planning to the last hike to the Cinder Cone. The last part of the drive took me via a dirt road that was posing a mild challenge for my car.When I got there I started running and almost immediately stumbled on a rock. At first I thought everything was fine but later on it'd be giving me some serious trouble, as I strained my AT band. It seemed a popular destination probably because the cone was mere 3k away from the campgrounds.The cone, which you can see on the photos to the left and below, was fairly interesting. It is surrounded by F…

I already wrote about Day 0 and the eventful Day 1, so let's take it from there. Getting up on Sunday was pretty tough as I had a hard Saturday, didn't get too much sleep and my cold still wasn't completely under wraps. I didn't have much appetite at breakfast but I suspect it had less to do with my cold and more to do with the fact that it wasn't very tasty.Then driving to the park as yesterday and on the way I was still hesitating what to do. The previous day I saw most of the interesting places in the South part of the park. I could tick off remaining trails there to have it completely covered. Or I could drive to the Northern Part. In the end I decide to go to Warner Valley, partly because it's shorter drive but mostly because I hope it'll be slightly different than the central part of the park. Also on the first day I had a short chat with a ranger and when I asked for best long trails she mentioned Mount Harkness as being the most beautiful hike in th…