Ultrarunner's notes

 The criminal returns to the crime scene… …but only for a smaller act of mischief this time — 64 km / 4100 m+. This race carries the nickname “Najtrudniejszy bieg w Polsce” — “The hardest race in Poland.” Whether that’s actually true, I don’t know. But one thing is certain: while running the 64 km course this year, I genuinely could not comprehend how I had managed to survive the 177 km version last year. And yet, barely two days after the race, I already found myself thinking it might be a good idea to come back one day… for the full 240 km madness. Whether that happens in this lifetime remains to be seen. I’m curious myself.   I won’t go into detail about the course itself — everything was thoroughly covered in last year’s report . But the weather and conditions this time were exactly my favorite kind: sunshine, warmth, dry trails (although some sections clearly preserve eternal mud…), and that gorgeous green-yellow-blue beauty of May. A change in the start/finish location ...

  My First 100-Miler Ultra-Trail Małopolska – a place where time flows like in a parallel universe. Where memories become the present. Where if it’s not raining, it’s snowing, and you hallucinate even without magic mushrooms. This is where mud was invented. Slimy mud, slippery mud, black mud, brown mud, sticky mud, wet mud, semi-dry mud, mud with rocks, mud with branches, mud with water, mud without water, innocent-looking mud and backstabbing mud, mud with snow, mud with rain. Mud uphill and mud downhill. Meadow mud, road mud, stream mud, forest mud. A place where even downhills somehow feel like uphills, where you're always going either straight up or straight down (up). The place where I ran my first ever 100-miler. Pre-Race Chaos, Panic, and Mild Electronics Crisis On the way to the race, I realize I’ve packed the wrong cables for charging my phone and watch (USC connector, but my power bank only has USB inputs). Cue the scavenger hunt for an electronics store whil...