Kitörés60 - trail event, Hungary
I did an absolutely awesome, very tiring, but very moving trail event Saturday night. It's organized annually in memory of the Hungarian and German soldiers who tried to break through the Soviet forces to end the longish siege of Buda castle in February, 1945. They had no choice, but surrender or die in battle. Out of several tens of thousands of young soldiers only a couple hundred survived....
The course follows the historic route, so we gathered inside the castle at sunset, ran down the castle hill, then up the surrounding hills into the woods, up and down several hills to a nearby small town, Szomor. I won't bore you with a detailed description of the course as probably there is no one here who would be familiar with it, so let's see some data and highlights:
Distance: 60K (37.3miles)
Elevation gain: 1800meters (6000ft)
Course: 90% rough trail, mostly single-track, all covered in snow
Weather: temps around freezing, pitch dark, snowstorm, 10-20inches of snow on ground. I was wearing running shoes, gaiters, running tights plus windbreaker pants, a short sleeved and a long sleeved tech shirt plus a light polarfleece sweatshirt, cap and gloves. For the last part I put on a light windbreaker jacket. Carried another sweatshirt tied around my waist, but I did not need that one.
The biggest awesomest highlights: all the volunteers were wearing II. World War uniforms of the German, Hungarian and Soviet Army complete with weapons and other equipment + they lit candles on the four soldiers' graves along the route
This was a so called "endurance hike" event, so almost everyone hiked/walked, only a couple idiots planned to run through the snow and darkness :) I walked the first pretty tough uphill with a walker guy and he kept asking if I wanted to keep that pace up for the whole course LOL By the time we got into the woods, it had started to snow and he had slowed down, but I managed to run up to another guy dressed in running gear, jogging in the snow. I asked if he minded me following him and he said it was okay so I did :) Soon it turned out we know each other from an online runner forum :)
Not gonna lie, it was incredibly hard to move forward in the snow, we walked a lot, but the guy kept such a brisk pace that I was getting worried I might not be able to keep up. I can walk really fast if I have the motivation and being left alone in the pitch dark forest if I wasn't fast enough served as the best possible motivation there and then :)
The uphills were brutal, but I loved the downhills and there were tons of both. I managed to stay upright the whole course which was totally surprising, considering the circumstances and the speed at which we crushed down the mountain :) No one passed us until the very last kilometers.
The checkpoints were absolutely authentic I almost screamed when a volunteer guy dressed in winter uniform emerged from the snow right in front of me :) At some points they lit fires which helped a lot as we could see them from afar.(plus they were less cold standing there for hours)
I was stupid enough not to take food or water with me, only a handful of crackers, because people from previous years said there had been enough stations. Well, this year things have changed apparently. To my major disappointment, the checkpoint I totally expected to have food and tea and heated shelter turned out to offer food only to people finishing there, that is those who registered for the 25K. At least the tiny pub was warm and I asked my buddy to lend me some money so that I could buy a cup of tea at least. After a longish depo off we went back into the darkness. It was still snowing (only stopped around sunrise) and on the two biggest hills we found the thickest whitest fog I had ever seen. It was just unbelievable! Just the two of us wrapped in the dim yellow circles of our headlights in the middle of a big white nowhere...incredible, stunning, almost creepy.
More ups and downs later we found a checkpoint that had hot soup and another one later that offered hot tea. The latter was the most authentic: the guys dug a trench in the snow beside a little group of trees in the middle of a huge, open field and hid there from the cold and the snow. They had all sorts of genuine WWII equipment, water tanks, weapons, uniform,everything. I could totally imagine some local elderly person meet these guys in the dark and get heart-attack or end up at psychiatry for insisting he saw WWII Soviet soldiers in the fields LOL
The last 10K was hell. We had to cut across series of open fields in 10-15 inches of snow, and we could choose between getting stuck in a very VERY narrow but deep rut (left by a single vehicle hours earlier) or staggering in the snow. I tried both and couldn't decide which one was worse...
The snow-covered asphalt road to the finish was somewhat easier, but it was getting colder and a little wind appeared to entertain us . Luckily, we finished in time to catch the bus back to Budapest (the next one would have been almost two hours later), but that meant we had to keep the "celebration" very short. Got our badges and certificates and a sew-on Iron Cross award, exchanged congrats and words of appraisal, quickly downed the mulled wine and sausages and rushed to the bus stop...Two hours of public transport wonders later I met up with hubby and we drove home to find about twice as big snow as there had been in the city :) I was totally fresh by then and kept myself busy all day, but had an early night :)
A huge THANK YOU goes out to the organizers!
From Kitörés 60
Lessons learned:
- wool socks --> GOOD Provide insulation even when wet
- gaiters -->GOOD Keep out snow and debris
- company on night runs -->GOOD
- doing 60K hard trail on glycogen reserves and snow --> nearly impossible (ergo: take that damn bottle of water and some food even if the description promises Canaan)
- walking all day in the city before a night trail --> why not?
- shoveling snow for two hours in the morning after having hiked all night --> BADASS
The course follows the historic route, so we gathered inside the castle at sunset, ran down the castle hill, then up the surrounding hills into the woods, up and down several hills to a nearby small town, Szomor. I won't bore you with a detailed description of the course as probably there is no one here who would be familiar with it, so let's see some data and highlights:
Distance: 60K (37.3miles)
Elevation gain: 1800meters (6000ft)
Course: 90% rough trail, mostly single-track, all covered in snow
Weather: temps around freezing, pitch dark, snowstorm, 10-20inches of snow on ground. I was wearing running shoes, gaiters, running tights plus windbreaker pants, a short sleeved and a long sleeved tech shirt plus a light polarfleece sweatshirt, cap and gloves. For the last part I put on a light windbreaker jacket. Carried another sweatshirt tied around my waist, but I did not need that one.
The biggest awesomest highlights: all the volunteers were wearing II. World War uniforms of the German, Hungarian and Soviet Army complete with weapons and other equipment + they lit candles on the four soldiers' graves along the route
This was a so called "endurance hike" event, so almost everyone hiked/walked, only a couple idiots planned to run through the snow and darkness :) I walked the first pretty tough uphill with a walker guy and he kept asking if I wanted to keep that pace up for the whole course LOL By the time we got into the woods, it had started to snow and he had slowed down, but I managed to run up to another guy dressed in running gear, jogging in the snow. I asked if he minded me following him and he said it was okay so I did :) Soon it turned out we know each other from an online runner forum :)
Not gonna lie, it was incredibly hard to move forward in the snow, we walked a lot, but the guy kept such a brisk pace that I was getting worried I might not be able to keep up. I can walk really fast if I have the motivation and being left alone in the pitch dark forest if I wasn't fast enough served as the best possible motivation there and then :)
The uphills were brutal, but I loved the downhills and there were tons of both. I managed to stay upright the whole course which was totally surprising, considering the circumstances and the speed at which we crushed down the mountain :) No one passed us until the very last kilometers.
The checkpoints were absolutely authentic I almost screamed when a volunteer guy dressed in winter uniform emerged from the snow right in front of me :) At some points they lit fires which helped a lot as we could see them from afar.(plus they were less cold standing there for hours)
I was stupid enough not to take food or water with me, only a handful of crackers, because people from previous years said there had been enough stations. Well, this year things have changed apparently. To my major disappointment, the checkpoint I totally expected to have food and tea and heated shelter turned out to offer food only to people finishing there, that is those who registered for the 25K. At least the tiny pub was warm and I asked my buddy to lend me some money so that I could buy a cup of tea at least. After a longish depo off we went back into the darkness. It was still snowing (only stopped around sunrise) and on the two biggest hills we found the thickest whitest fog I had ever seen. It was just unbelievable! Just the two of us wrapped in the dim yellow circles of our headlights in the middle of a big white nowhere...incredible, stunning, almost creepy.
More ups and downs later we found a checkpoint that had hot soup and another one later that offered hot tea. The latter was the most authentic: the guys dug a trench in the snow beside a little group of trees in the middle of a huge, open field and hid there from the cold and the snow. They had all sorts of genuine WWII equipment, water tanks, weapons, uniform,everything. I could totally imagine some local elderly person meet these guys in the dark and get heart-attack or end up at psychiatry for insisting he saw WWII Soviet soldiers in the fields LOL
The last 10K was hell. We had to cut across series of open fields in 10-15 inches of snow, and we could choose between getting stuck in a very VERY narrow but deep rut (left by a single vehicle hours earlier) or staggering in the snow. I tried both and couldn't decide which one was worse...
The snow-covered asphalt road to the finish was somewhat easier, but it was getting colder and a little wind appeared to entertain us . Luckily, we finished in time to catch the bus back to Budapest (the next one would have been almost two hours later), but that meant we had to keep the "celebration" very short. Got our badges and certificates and a sew-on Iron Cross award, exchanged congrats and words of appraisal, quickly downed the mulled wine and sausages and rushed to the bus stop...Two hours of public transport wonders later I met up with hubby and we drove home to find about twice as big snow as there had been in the city :) I was totally fresh by then and kept myself busy all day, but had an early night :)
A huge THANK YOU goes out to the organizers!
From Kitörés 60
Lessons learned:
- wool socks --> GOOD Provide insulation even when wet
- gaiters -->GOOD Keep out snow and debris
- company on night runs -->GOOD
- doing 60K hard trail on glycogen reserves and snow --> nearly impossible (ergo: take that damn bottle of water and some food even if the description promises Canaan)
- walking all day in the city before a night trail --> why not?
- shoveling snow for two hours in the morning after having hiked all night --> BADASS