When Sport is not good for your health anymore...

My daughter is in high school and sport is one of her subjects. In the context of this subject, she was supposed to take part in a running race in the capital. Unfortunately, she had a karate tournament on the same day and couldn't take part. We had to find a substitute race and since I didn't want to let her run alone, I decided to take part together with her. This was probably one of my worst decision in the past year...

I trained as good as I could

In the weeks previous to the race, I went training on a regular basis. I even bought a Garmin watch that allowed me to see the pace and the heart rate. When I was young, I did a lot of such races but years passed and I'm close to 50 now. Motivated by my new watch, I went a bit too fast in the training two weeks before the race. I had a pain in the foot for a couple of days and had to stop training in order to be fit for the race. Unfortunately, my foot wasn't 100% perfect on the day of the race but I thought it would be ok.

When choosing this substitute race, we mainly looked at a possible date that we were both available and something that wasn't too far away. The race we found was on 31st of May and it was only 45 km away from home. So we went for it. While driving there, I was a bit surprised because the road to the village was getting smaller and smaller. It was a very small village and when I checked my phone, I didn't have any reception at all. When we got out of the car, we realized that it was much colder than we expected. My daughter decided that she would run with her raincoat because she was too cold. I went for the t-shirt and leggings.

On the paper it looked feasible

The distance that we were supposed to run was 13 Km but it was not flat at all. We would go up and down more than 500 meters in altitude. So I knew that it would be tough but it was much worse than expected...

The profile of the race

One minute before the start, the floodgates open

As we were waiting before the start line at 19h15, suddenly very dark clouds came over us and it started to poor down like I have never seen before. I was drenched within 2 minutes and we started to run in the rain. Together with other 150 participants we started to race. We tried to run together with my daughter and we managed quite well during the first two kilometres that were on a road. Our objective was to remain around 6 min 30 sec per kilometre. We could manage that quite easily until the track went into the forest.

Welcome mud and slides

From one moment to the next, the race continued on forest tracks. With the rain and the 100 people before me, the track was only mud and I realized that my shoes were not appropriate. My racing shoes have almost a flat profile to run on roads. The first time the path went down, I stared to slide more than run. My daughter had better shoes fortunately and I had to let her go, to never see her again until the finish line...

After the forest we arrived on the top of a hill and the track went on on grass. They had cut a narrow path in a field and around all the grass was waist high. With the rain and after 100 participants, it had transformed in a swamp. I had to make sure not to lose my shoes while running. I tried to run through the high grass but it wasn't much better. The rain continued and the tracks in the forests became little streams of water. You had mud on the side and flowing water in the centre of the track. So I opted for the water because at least the stones under the water gave some grip.

My first fall

I had my first fall after about 5 kilometres. I bumped my knee on a root and scratched my hand on a tree. I had no option but to continue. I fell two more times but it wasn't as hurtful. A woman slipped before me and she landed on her back full in the mud. She just laughed and went on running...

New objective: Survive

After about 7 km, I didn't care about the time or the rank anymore. I just wanted to bloody survive this thing. With the dark clouds and the late time in the day, I could sometimes hardly see where I was running. It was really dangerous and I was just worried for my daughter. The track wasn't so well marked and it could easily happen to take the wrong path in the forest. So I couldn't give the race up because I had no idea how to get back to the arrival if not over the track and then I wanted to be sure that my daughter wasn't waiting for me somewhere.

So I took on step at a time. Sometimes, I had to go down backwards because I was sliding in all directions. By now, I was full of mud and my white shoes were brown and my black leggings was brown as well. My t-shirt must have weighed 5 kilos. One person after the other passed me especially when it was going downhill. When it went uphill, I managed but downhill was horrible.

Fortunately, my watch told me the distance and I knew how far it still was to the arrival. A kilometer before the arrival, one of the very rare spectators asked me from under his umbrella “Are there any more behind you?“ I had to laugh because I had absolutely no idea and I answered that probably not because it was hardly possible to go slower than me.

The people passing me where mostly women and I left the path to let them pass. They were all very kind and they encouraged me not to give up. By the time, I was close to cramps in my calf. My hand was hurting from the impact with a tree and my knee was in blood. After close to two hours, I finally arrived and they were tidying the place already. My daughter had arrived 20 minutes earlier and she was totally frozen. Her lips were blue because she couldn't get into the car. I felt very bad for her but I was so happy that she was not hurt.

My shoes after the race. The initial color is white...

When we arrived at the car, we had a problem because we needed to get changed and it was simply not possible to do so in the car. So we put plastic bags on the seats and we drove to the gym hall of the village where there were showers. The car got very dirty in spite of that. We managed to take a shower and get changed. It was close to 22:00 then and we were very hungry. Unfortunately there were only fries and sauscice left but it was better than nothing.

It took me more than two days after the race to more or less walk without pain. Today, for the first time I kind of feel normal again.

This race was really sobering and painful. I definitely feel my age. But we agreed with my daughter that we will probably never forget this experience...

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With @ph1102, I'm running the @liotes project.

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