World Run II / Reports

The map shows the position of which the pictures for the day are taken (if any). The start and finish markers are placed at the first and last valid registered position. This is not nessesary the actual start and finish position, if GSM or GPS signals was not available.

Goto: 2012-06-07 2012-06-09 Canada

2012-06-08:

10
Distance today: 31.0 km (Accumulated: 35491.0 km)
Elapsed time: 03:04:18
Country: Canada

Start 10:25am., 21c, clear & light wind, at cross of Nauw. Loop Rd. & Rd.100. Finish 14:10pm., 23c, a few clouds & same, at white sign "Riverbank" (Riverbank Cemetary) on Rd.121.

Hillbillies, Townspeople and Friendship !

It may sound arrogant, but I think - coming from Denmark - it isnt. A citizen of a contry of just over 5mil.people in total, we are ourselves little less than from eighter of those two categories ;-)

And the impression right now certainly is that of hillbillies, townspeople and friendship; understood in the best possible way ! It is semi-remote areas that I am running through now and for example after yesterdays short run my support-driver and I looked for the official campground in the village of Hampton. It appeared that both the campground and its hotel had somehow disappeared (or google may have it confused with another "Hampton" - I have run through quite a few by now); any which way there wasnt accomodation. After driving a little bit further and finding neighter campgrounds or oppotunities for wildcamping we stopped and asked two young farmers at the main road: Sure, they had a place we could pitch our tents and park the car. 20canadian dollars it would cost us (they are businessmen, the canadians ;-). We paid up and camped down. But little later than had the sun begun to set - the "Hillbilly fun" started. First some driving around on loud ATV-motorcycles (4wheel off-road motorcycles). Then some random shooting with airrifles - or some other kind of rifles. Then what sounded like a healthy mix. of drinking and fiddeling w. engines.

Once the pitch black darkness covered the road the atv's were reved up' again and out they went; no lights (I guess no hillbilly with respect for himself drives with lights on after dark !); we couldnt see them but the thunder' that went past the tents, down into the valley and rapidly up again was not to be mistaken. A little drinking and shooting later and it was time for further sharpening of the driving skills - the 'Hillbilly Games' was at their highest peak.

But even the best entertainment reaches its end, eventually. And already at 3am. we could get some sleep..

In the late morning, when we were taking down our tents, we didnt see the farmers. But I'm sure they were recovering their strength for another night of cultural displays !

Make no mistake, though: Canadians comes across as Very Friendly :-) For example, during todays run, an elderly man came up to Alex while he was setting up the camera for some documentary filming of a tired danish runner barely dragging himself up over yet another hill.. The man got the story of the run and quickly we found ourselves in a conversation about canadian ultra-runners. There has been some outstanding cross-continent runners in canadian history, most of all Terry Fox who one-legged (though also w. an artificial leg) and with spreading cancer - ran across the contry a few decades back. The other main figure, Matt Mahoney, kept one of the highest averages for this kind of run w. 100km per day (!!) on his 7000km acrossing of Canada back in the 1990'ties.

The old man then offered us a stay in his cabin out on an island off' Nova Scotia in case we would want a rest-day or rest-week later on while running in Canada. Great :-)

Still; there remained some km's to be run today and I had to move on despite the interesting talk - and here lies the problem. During the last 7-10days I have been puzzled by the disappearing of strength in my running. I am now at a point where even 20km is a problem ! And energy to upload the daily reports is nearly gone even after a short day like that. I have tried w. two restdays; first one right after I crossed the canadian border 10d. ago. And then another only a few days later as I came out from the restday just a tired as before. Result of the second resday: still fatigued to a point where I'd raughter sit down at roadside than run past 5-7km's ! Very serious indeed if I want to complete this run.

So far I've then kept the run moving forward by pressing myself through 20-25km of running per day; today beeing an exception with 31km's. But its a concearn to me, as even at home in normal traning a 30km run would be considered as a "medium" or "short" run depending on what championship or event I am preparing myself for.

The obvious explanation would be the 35 000km I have in the legs by now. And that doing the 6day race (100km per day) a month ago was not a brilliant idea. But I am wondering if its actually the 3 days of running w. a 20kg backpack - since it feels like my natural running rythm and running step'/landing&push off' hasnt returned since then.

The less pleasant explanation could be that I am round about at the treshold of how much a human can run without needing serious rest. With about 1400km remaining (almost the distance from Denmark to Italy) to run - that is not an explanation I can use right now.

So I have to settle for that its "delayed effects" of the combination of 6day race, back-pack running and the accumulated 35 000km in the legs. And hope that with some patience, streatching, mental build-up; and chocolate eating - that the strength will return :-)

I'll upload the reports from the last week within the next day but with at this level of exhaustion even that will take its time.

PS: As you can see from the endomondo gps-track the system once again had one of its 'error-days'. It auto-shut down after 19km's so the last 11km's is in a seperate file. I lost about 1km of tracking before I noticed the problem and could start the system up again.