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World Run I / Reports

Goto: 2004-12-12 2004-12-14 Australia

- city sign: "Two Wells">.


44km, 4:18:44h. Excl. food, water, road-finding, toilet etc. stops.
Total 15.166km.

(Running company by Dirk Thys all stage. Crew: Ian and Phil all stage).

Start: 09:50am.
Finish: 15:49pm.
Time GMT + 10:30 hours (NB: South Australian Time!)

+18c, overcast and light wind at start.
25c, almost clear sky and light wind at finish.


... The day started with a phone call around 6:30 in the morning - A
national radio station wanted an interview. My wake-up time is 8am, so:
Sorry; can?t do that ;-)
Luckily my host Dirk Thys and his wife Natalie handled the interview
excellently - even when the journalist with radio truck and satellite dish
turned up at their house about 20 minutes later - with the runner safe
asleep again !

Dirk did the interview with humour and knowledge - and I got my sleep
before the stage :-)


The point behind the story is that while media is good for the run and for
promoting ultra running in general, it is in fact one of my goals
hopefully to be able to keep perspective and never plan my run around the
media. Media can do many valuable things for an event, but to my best
opinion once the sportsman/woman gets too involved with the idea of the
media-presence itself - a bit of the authenticity of the sport looses out!

And for me, being true to my sport and my goals comes first :-)


Today?s stage was, contrary to yesterday, quite flat and led me and my
running companions through the centre of Adelaide. Again a major
Australian city which stuns me with its open city-planning allowing for
plenty of light, space and parks between the uptown areas. A pleasure for
the eye - and for the runner ;-)


13. December running tip:

Long Term Planning.

When you plan your running progress or revise your running hopes, I find
that its very useful to keep a very long perspective. While detailed short
and medium term training schedules/plans are definitely valuable tools
towards progress - its important not to miss what the overall goal is!

Even as a young athlete it can be of benefit to set dreams or goals 10 or
even 15 years in the future!! What happens is that it actually can make
you relax a bit more in your daily hunt for progress. If you allow years
for a steady and gradual progress you will give the body a good chance to
adapt to what you require of it - and you will have the thrill of having a
clear "red line" through your years of running :-)

What I through more than 21 years of competitive running has often seen is
that an athlete makes strong progress and through hard training and within
a few years reach almost her/his potential - but by going forward faster
than the body can safely adapt also in the long term injures themselves so
that they never reach the absolute height of their capacity.
Fully adaptation of bone structure to the hardship of long distance
running takes for example in average 5 years of structured training... So
carefull progress pays!