First 100km Race

dragosroua (74)in #running • 8 years ago

This is a fragment from my upcoming book, Running For My Life, which will be launched this December.

We started on a beautiful evening, from a place situated at exactly 101 kilometers from Bucharest, near the mountains. The weather was gorgeous and we were well rested and eager to run.

The first two hours of the race were almost without history. It was just flow, we ran each at his own pace (much faster than we expected) and we were just focusing on the road.

Then it became dark. The group was split in 3: the leaders (two very fast guys, also runners at Balaton), the middle group (in which I was with Andrei and a few other runners) and the last group, people who were just trying out to see if they can run such a long distance.

At some point even the middle group started to split. I got to run alone for 2 or 3 legs (and by leg I understand the distance between 2 refreshment points, which were basically just places where we met the support cars). Those legs were absolutely superb (see below, at Mental Fitness). The night was still, the sky was crystal clear, I wasn’t (yet) in pain and I could just let myself dive into my running meditation.

At the end of one of these legs, around km 40, I took a wrong step and twisted my right ankle. Fortunately, the next refreshment point was just a kilometer away, so I could assess the damage quickly. I used an anti inflammatory ointment and decided to run more conservatively. That was also the starting point for hypothermia (see below) and, all in all, the beginning of the bad stuff.

10 kilometers after this incident we met with another group of runners. It was half the distance and just a bit over midnight. The new runners were much fresher than we (and by “we” I mean me and Andrei, the rest were either in front of us, or abandoned after 44-48 kilometers) and that kinda helped. In hindsight, it helped a lot, because they added a touch of fresh energy and a lot of positive attitude.

An important moment of the race was the second dawn. As we approached Bucharest and the night was vanishing, the temperature was slowly starting to rise and the light started to creep in. I felt a burst in energy and detached from the platoon for about 5 kilometers, until the last refreshment point. Unfortunately, that was the part with concrete surface and that hurt my ankles a lot (see below: What Didn’t Work). Nevertheless, as we all entered the city, now in full day light, and entered the park where the finish point was (the park where most of us are regularly running) a sense of accomplishment became very clear. We were literally 2 kilometers away from the finish point.

And, just as I was climbing a small bridge Andrei announced that we nailed it. We reached the 100 kilometers milestone exactly at that bridge in the park. From that point we walked until the finish point, another kilometer. I was literally feeling battered and bruised. But very, very happy.

The feeling was almost surreal: I had real difficulties in finding a part of the body that didn’t hurt, I was still shivering because of hypothermia but at the same time I knew we finished in a very good time: 12 hours and 37 minutes.

image source: personal collection: Deer's Valley, Omu peak, Carpathian Mountains

I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.