Today we are feeling good because we had the 9th fastest time (and 1st non-sponsored team) on the 6km mountain sprint, which was stage 5 of the Transalpine.
Sadly, but not suprisingly, we had to drop out of the official race yesterday because of problems with my left knee and left ankle. I could run uphill, but downhill and hopping side to side were too painful. This means that we can keep racing each stage, but we do not get an official overall time or a finisher's t-shirt.
This race is NOT a bunch of ultramarathons in a row. It is mountain running. And parts of it are dangerous. Many people are out because of injury. We visited a friend today from Norway who is in the hospital. Neither of us know if hospitalization was really necessary in her case, but I just think the readers of this blog should know how challenging this race is. And another man broke a leg. And another friend of from Denmark is also too injured to continue. We definitely have had fun, but the people here who are doing well are experienced mountain runners.
We are planning to take tomorrow off (which is another near-marathon length mountain crossing) and hopefully participate in the last two stages.
If we could prepare for this again, we would do a lot more steep, rocky downhill running.
I'm sorry I still have no pictures. We are in the town of Sent, Switzerland now and it is absolutely gorgeous. They speak Rumantsch in this area, a beautiful combination of French and Italian with a little bit of German. Just an interesting tidbit for you all.
3 comments:
I checked out the race today to see how you guys are doing. Bummer on the ankle, but if you still can enjoy it for the left days, then more power to you. I always said - if you have toi DNF, do it gracefully, have fun with it and never regret. Steep downhills are some beast that requires practice for sure. It is a free falling, basically, with no braking allowed, but good eye-foot coordination. It can't be trained for on regular paths. I hope it's an awesome experience for both of you! And wow on a language mix, interesting for sure.
You guys are welcome to come practice your mountain running here :-) I still have trouble on downhills though, I'm not sure I'll ever get good no matter how much I practice!
Steep rocky downhills - sounds like the Zumbro and Superior Sawtooth 100's are in your future.
Wish I could've been there to help; if there's one thing I know, it's how to finish trail runs when injured.
Now, where is my Danish/Rumantsch dictionary?
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