Ultrarunner's notes

 Celebrating spring with a winter run for a good thing     Anyone who knows me knows that winter ultras and I don’t get along too well. I’m a lizard — I need to bask on warm rocks, with sunburned skin and heat on my back. I once ran a winter hundred — Letecká 100 — but back then a wild spring was raging, so I basically dodged all winter conditions 🤷‍♀️. So when I heard about the 10th annual ALS run adding a brand-new 65 km route, it didn’t even tempt me. Late March can be tricky — mostly cold — and I wasn’t about to risk trudging through snowdrifts on a ridge, slipping down icy slopes of Kozí Kameň, or shivering for endless hours. The past three years, we’ve helped at aid stations in Batizovce or Spišská Teplica, and I assumed this year would be the no different. Then one day, I got a message from Mirko Hollý telling me I should go ahead and sign up and not to worry about the aid station - they’d handle it. I politely declined at first, but well… the idea was planted...

   #standwithukraine 💙💛💙💛 At the beginning of the year, I told myself that I would do no more than 5 races this season, and when the dates of each event were announced, I picked five of them. The first one on the list was to be Strážovská 50 in May. Photo: me Then the uncontent psychopath attacked Ukraine. Subsequently, many people started to falter and there was not much missing, and I would start faltering from the fact that many people started faltering. I will express my attitude to this situation only with the abbreviation "FP". Smart people will guess what I mean. "A trip as fuck this month, bro.. I hope I haven't done some fucking stupid fuck up.." Psychohygienic runs with my girls kept me in a somewhat normal state of mind, and when an announcement appeared on FB that the organizer of the Pohronský Inovec Marathon (which was canceled due to Covid measures on the original February date) would organize the Pohronský Inovec Marathon in the alternative d...

 "I'll start at full blast and gradually speed up." (Motivational quote) "He who does not overdo the beginning will not make the personal best." (Tekel, J., 17.7.2021, Telgárt) Foto: Matúš Jančík I was the first one at the presentation that morning. I say to myself, OK, at least I'm the first at the presentation 😂 That morning at 7:00 a.m. in Svit, 16 men and 5 women - me, Mirka and three other girls - lined up for the start. I had no idea what result I should expect from myself, I counted on all kinds of alternatives, even the last place, but I didn't even dream of winning. I just wanted to have a good run and finish the race. To have numbers and not letters in the result sheet 😄 and most importantly, do it all in good health. That morning, as I always do before the start, I put myself somewhere in the back so as not to get in the way of the speeders in the initial few hundred meters. For the first two kilometers along the flat, the majority remained ...

 Covid canceled many races that year and also both dates of the Ultralanovka for Plamienok (Lanovka stands for Cable car and Plamienok is an organization in Slovakia that helps families with seriously and terminally ill children to spend their time together at home, not in a hospital. They provide palliative care to those children at home. Ultralanovka is an event that takes place under a Cable car at Koliba - Kamzik in Bratislava and the whole income from the event goes to Plamienok. People can contribute to this by renting runner's legs). There was also a ban on going out and traveling outside the district due to Covid, but the Ultralanovka organizer allowed registered runners to run it individually and virtually, either directly on Kamzík in Bratislava or on a route with similar parameters in the area of each individual's home. I'm looking out of the office window at the hill above Liptovský Mikuláš, called Háj-Nicovô, and I'm straight away checking its parameters in...