Introduction
Budapest Marathon Organisation offers a great race and a real challenge. Lake Balaton Supermarathon is a 4-day-long race, in which the participants can run for one,two or 4 days – each day about 48 km, 195,4 km all together. The course leads around Hungary’s famous lake, the Lake Balaton. The race is also open to relay teams. This event was founded in 2007.
Balaton Supermarathon – 4 days of mentally and physically challenging running
The Balaton Supermarathon, a multi-day race run around the Lake Balaton was held between 17th and 20th of March. Almost 200 individual runners from different countries, such as Germany, Italy, Lithuania, France, Finland, the UK, Ireland and last but not least from the United States, lined up at the start, with least a dozen ready to make a strong bid to the victory, others to run a PB or complete it within the jogger-friendly time-limit.
The aim I had been hoping for was to make a “comeback” to ultramarathon life after suffering a stress fracture (of femoral neck) in the May of 2009, which required an erforced rest with a long lay-off.
The week before turned to be a complete nightmare for me. After having my wisdom teeth removed and suffering from terrible flu, I could not ignore the cumulative signs of groin strain, Achilles tendinosis and tendovaginitis.
Did I overtrain myself? After I completed the work-outs following the structured training plans of the Spartathlon winner and multiple record holder János Bogár, in early March I really felt the physical and mental strength required to an ultramarathon, but just before the race I was suffering for splitting agonising pain in the lower half of my legs. I had a sneaky suspicion: neither the amount of kilometres or the speed killed me, more the case of running in snow and on icy-slippery roads for weeks and weeks prior to the competition.
Adam Zahoran is on Facebook
Race website www.budapestmarathon.com
This article will appear in full in Issue 6 of Ultrarunning World magazine
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