Why running? How all of this happened??!
Bartosz Lewandowski
2 min read
Jan 3
48
0
It has been almost a full year since my first trail run race. It was Formosa Run 16km (over total 700m+ elevation) here in Taiwan. One of my friends from work invited me to sign up and try it. Before that I never run more than 10km on flat... not to mention any race with elevation in mountains. After discussing with a friend and few other people from work we signed up in August (race is held in Nov)... and we ended up with group of 6 all going for 16km... most of us like to hike but that was it. We start getting ready for this race and doing togheter some slower or faster hiking (or you would call power hiking) trails around Taipei (mostly portions of so called Taipei Grand Trail - more about this trail here). I also start running almost every day shorter distances. Invested in trail running shoes and some running back pack with water bladder from Decathlon.
On the race weekend we made whole road trip... well my friends did, I joined them in the evening. We stayed togheter in one BnB which actually made a small team building event!.
Worth mentioning the "structure" of our running group.... we got one running machine that is doing thiratlons and marathons and have around 10% body fat..... we got one more person that runs marathons for almost 30 years and counting, he completed all Marathon Majors and just doing marathons for fun....(also body fat around 10%:)) however he never run trail run before. Rest of the group (me included) just casual hikers/runners that never completed full marathon....
Race day as a race day everyone excited and ready to go (follow by poor sleep day before:)).More about Formosa Trail Run you can find here. Race itself was great even if at the end I felt dehadreted and tired like never before. The thing is, I was hooked! Two days later I signed up for next 2 races next year Alishan SuperRace and Xterra Asian Championships in Kenting, both 21km.... I knew nothing will be the same anymore:)
1 year later..... I completed 1 road half marathon, 5 half trail marathons (fro 21km to 27km), 1 full road marathon and just recently 50k Ultra (UTMB) in Hong Kong. On top of that last 365 days I did 1500km running and 34000 meters of elevation gain.....and I do not think I am going to stop...ever:)