Saturday, May 06, 2006

The perfect recepie for muscle fatigue.
Def: Muscle fatigue is the decline in ability of a muscle to create force. It is a normal result of vigorous exercise...
Well today I have devised a perfect, vigorous exercise to get the "best" result. I paticipated in the "tek trojk" ( run of the trinities) which is a part of Way by the wire event, which celebrates Ljubljana getting liberated after the italian occupation during the second world war. I am really not a born runner, so I chose an interesting, relaxed team ( name: Sunday walkers ) and we decided to participate in the shorter run ( "only" 13 km). No big deal isn't it, only a good forth of the real marathon... Wrong: the corse takes you over Golovec hill, through muddy forest paths, insted of the ordinary smooth marathon track. The funny ( = annoying) thing is that most of the track is always a bit up or downhill, so you really get the partisan feeling. Oh, did I mention it was muddy? :) Well, I have been to Rock Oto?ec, the muddiest rock festival in near proximity, but this track can on some parts easily beat it. So it is often the best tactic is to simply use your primal, cave man instict and avoid the jams on the path with running through bushes.
So my first mistake (= a way to get perfect muscle fatigue) today was wearing a too warm T shirt. Instead of my regualar, sleweless running shirt I decided to be in fashion harmony with my team members and paid for it dearly. Yes fashion can hurt a lot! After the start I must say it felt great to be a part of such a big mass of runners (over 2000), but soon I started owerheating and sweating too much to really enjoy the feeling. Otherwise the run itself was quite pleasant: soft soil, nice green forest, many women running along...
Then my second mistake came... I decided that since I was sweating a lot, I should also drink a lot as well. And so I drank almost half a liter of water very quickly at the first " refuling station". Of coarse that resulted in some stomache pain. At the second table ( 4km later) they also served bananas. And by obviously not learning anything from the first table I got a good bite of them. Well that resulted in even more tummy pain. After finnaly descending from golovec these unpleasant feelings were replaced by something much more paintful. The feeling of overheating on sun heated asphalt. I had a little crisis, walked for 10 steps so my pulse lowered a bit and then victoriously marched towards the finish on Presern sqare. The feeling of crossing the finish line, while being aplauded by quite a big crowd is phenomenal, especially because you know you won't have to do all the running for a whole year :) .
Although it was hot, hard, muddy and sometimes too crowdy it was a wonderful experience. Thanks to Matija and Peter for running this part of my iter with me.
PS: my legs are getting really heavy.

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