Tag: trail running

Top 10 piese de echipament pe care le port cel mai des la alergare

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Privind la pozele pe care le am alergând sau la ce caut prin dulap când împachetez pentru o alergare pe munte, îmi dau seama că am câteva lucruri pe care le port mult mai des decât pe altele. Fie din utilitate, fie pentru că sunt preferatele mele pentru material, lejeritate etc.

Așa că am făcut o listă a pieselor de echipament cu care ies cel mai des la alergat. A fost destul de simplu, pentru că în mai toate pozele mele de la antrenamente apar îmbrăcată aproximativ la fel.

Nu prea caut eu să mă asortez sau să calculez la gram, dar am niște preferințe (materiale ușoare, respirabile) și niște pitici pe creier (nu suport nimic strâmt pe piept sau în talie și nici tricourile cu mânecă scurtă care vine până la cot, de exemplu).

Iată top 10 zece piese de echipament pe care le port cel mai des la alergare:


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10 lessons learned from my trail races in 2019

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My trail running races in 2019 have brought lots of a-ha moments, gratitude, and wonderful memories. Looking back, I realise I’ve learned a lot.

Some were things that I already knew that just got extra proof. Others were experiences that I had to go through to find out what motivates me as a trail runner, what makes me run faster, enjoy the trails more, and reminded myself why I love this sport.

Here are just 10 things I’ve learned from racing in trail competitions in 2019.

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Grossglockner Ultra Trail – Conquering the Austrian Alps in our first trail relay

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Grossglockner Ultra Trail is a race that goes around Austria’s highest peak, Grossglockner (3798m), through the National Park Hohe Tauern. And it’s one of the few trail events that have a long distance team relay race. Of course that’s what Andrei and I went for. 

It’s a relatively “young” race, the 2019 edition being the 5th one so far.

We signed up for the 110k race, the longest one, but split in two: Andrei would do the first leg, 60k with 4500m elevation, while I’d do the second, 50k with about 2000m elevation. The 50k segment was exactly the route of the official Kalser Tauern Trail race of the event. 

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5 mistakes I made in Lavaredo Cortina Trail race

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Running the Lavaredo Cortina Trail’s 48km race in 2018 was a beautiful experience. I’ll call it that because it wasn’t just about the race. It was the entire roadtrip with friends, seeing new trails of the Dolomites, and going through the highs and lows of the competition.

Also, about rediscovering a place I’d fallen in love with a year before, on the road cycling trip.

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Transylvania 50k – Chasing demons on the trails in Bucegi

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After a few years of dreaming about it, I finally ran the Transylvania 50k race.

It’s not like I couldn’t run there any other day, but there’s something special that happens in a runner’s circuits when you put a bib number on his shirt and you wake him up at 5am to face neverending climbs surrounded by others sharing the same suffering. Yeah, it’s hard to explain why we love it so much.

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Brasov Marathon – The epic adventure of the first race in a new city

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As a kid, I used to play the violin. It meant hours of practice almost every afternoon, when everything I played made my family and our neighbours cringe.

I could tell by their fake smile when we met in front of the building. They’d ask me “so how is the violin practice going?” as if they didn’t already know it was going terrible.

But every once in a while, the noises I usually made would sound like real music. Call it flow or practice making perfect, but some days the chords just “aligned” to play as they should.

I had the same feeling about running Brasov Marathon last Saturday. A race that I hadn’t been to before on a route that was kind of familiar to me because I had trained on parts of it, but never entirely and definitely never feeling in such a good flow as I did on the race day.

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Transylvania 50k: preparing my first ultra

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With only one month left before the start of Transylvania 100k event I thought about sharing some things about how I’m preparing the 50k race, which I consider to be my first ultramarathon.

Technically, everything longer than a marathon falls into the ultra definition. However, the mad people in the trail running world who run long distances say that nothing under 60k counts as an ultra. I won’t go for the extremes, so let’s say 50k is somewhere in between.

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Run, travel, and feast like a vampire in Transylvania 100k trail race

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Running on spring hills and chilly weather is one of the biggest pleasures I get from trail running.

This spring, on May 18th, I’m going back to one of my favourite races, in one of my favourite places – Transylvania 100k. It’s a competition in Bucegi mountains, that blends the beautiful scenery of the wild mountain valleys and peaks with the legend of Dracula and overall a great vacation-like atmosphere.

The kind of vacation in which you run ultras and sweat a lot.

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Small tweaks that helped me improve my running performance

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I’ve learned a lot since I started running. How to train for a marathon, how be faster on uphills, how to survive when you’re injured and can’t run, what to eat before a race, or during a race, how to convince my mom that it’s safe to run in the mountains, what’s the best recovery, and how to shop for fluorescent shoes are just some examples. But these are the big lessons, the foundations.

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Marathon 3200 – Cracking Romania’s toughest mountain marathon

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What is it that makes your heart beat fast, your mind wander and your feet dance nervously?

What is it that brings hundreds of runners each year at the start of Marathon 7500, for the last 10 years?

It’s probably a mix between the beauty of Bucegi mountains, the difficulty of the team races, and the people that write the story. And especially about that one person that you team up with.

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Transylvania 20k – See you next time, Dracula

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“If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans”

 

That’s how I feel now looking back at my plans before Transylvania 100k, a beautiful race in Bucegi Mountains, Romania, where I really was looking forward to run my first 50k. The competition has different distances, from 20k up to 100k, and I had been thinking for a long time to do the first longer than marathon distance. Citește mai mult