Different ultra

The past days have been so hectic again. I spent a lot of time on the road (in trains and long distance buses) and abroad. One example being an 18 hour trip by 7 different trains from Niedernsill to Tilburg last Sunday. Or what I call My Private Ultra. Departed from Niedernsill on Sunday at 2 pm. Instead of sleepy night trip and feeling-sorry-for-myself moments, I utilised the numerous change overs and filled the time gaps by geocaching. Walked 12 km through dark cities and funny enough, arrived to the final destination on Monday morning quite rested.

As often, it is running (or walking when showers are not available) that provides some anchor in these uneasy times. And geocaching. Anywhere, anytime, anyhow.

Night cache at Dusseldorf Hbf

Camouflage

Uncovered

Early Dutch morning

One should never ever give up. Never.

Preggo running IV.

20-22 weeks: As many of you know, we have spent last week in the Alps. As V was busy with her ski instructor training (Anwarter), I had all the time to work, eat and… run. My daily routine consisted of 1-2  hours of early morning (6.30 – 8.30) running and geocaching and then working and eating and walking – until it was time to go to sleep again. This scheme did me good. I managed to run 40 km that week and until now, I actually feel very good.

Total weight gain: 7 kg

My running has reached a point where anything faster than 8.5 km per hour is not comfortable, however, maintaining the snail speed of 8 km per hour is quite nice, actually. Walking/hiking is good, too. And here it the evidence: last Saturday (when many of you ran marathons all over Europe) we took a little hike from the Hinterglemm valley to Forsthofalm:

Juneathon Day 27: Perfect evening for dummies

1. For once, get home from work on time.

2. Load the GPS co-ordinates of a cool geocache to your Garmin.

3. Convince your significant other to join you (and to stop asking questions).

4. Drive to the dunes.

5. Start running.

6. Enjoy the treasure hunt and find the cache.

7. Run to the beach.

8. Take off your shoes and run some more.

9. Sing along with the waves.

10. Drive home and collapse on the sofa with Chinese chicken noodles (cooked yesterday).

Juneathon Day 26: Shortest?

Long day with many issues and problems and back sets – sounds familiar? At the end of the evening, still with nothing to eat and no Juneathon run I managed to sneak out of the door for a short run along 2 geocaches. The plan was an easy 4-5 km ‘recovery’ trip. I first had to cross this bridge (so much for wildlife in Leiden):I found the first cache nearby and started worrying about the second one which was presumably placed in somebody’s garden. But then again, it is the charm of the game to overcome all kinds of fears (and besides, it was really getting dark). So a couple of minutes later I found the second one and ran home crossing this bridge: 

At home my Garmin showed 4.7 km. Probably the shortest Juneathon run. But on the positive end: I crossed the magic line of 200 km in June (my plan was 100 miles so I am kind of ahead of my own schedule…).

Juneathon Day 25: Run & Cache

I used to geocache quite a lot. Back in 2005, when I discovered the handheld GPS device, I was sort of addicted to puzzling the waypoints and crawling in mud under narrow bridges…. Then after finding and logging 700+ geocaches, the excitement washed away. The Garmin went to a large box at the attic named “Old hobbies” and it stayed there until last week. In France, I started combining running and geocaching. Searching for the waypoints while running through new places breaks the boredom and these days, for me it works better than the mp3 player.

For tonight (the last Juneathon week) I planned a 8 km run with 2-3 cache retrieve attempts. It was the first time that I actually used my Garmin Forerunner 310XT to navigate to the caches (have Garmin GPSmap 60CS as well but thought it was too ‘heavy duty’ for my gentle run). The first one took a while as I was disturbed by this cute baby that looked scared to death as I was looking for the micro container:

The second one was a breeze (except the 3 km d-tour) but the third one, the third one is definitely worth showing to you (Geocachers in Leiden, please don’t look as this one is a spoiler). In the default stage, it looked like an ordinary bird house:But that only lasted until I pulled the chimney:

No, I did not break it – it gently opened itself and after retrieving the geocaching box and logging my visit, I could bring it back to its original shape so it is ready for whoever comes after me. Brilliant!

Run total: 12.8 km

Caches found: 3

Bird houses opened: 1

Juneathon Day 15/16: Chalon sur Saone

On Friday morning our holiday started: we packed the car heading to South of France. The destination for tonight was Chalon sur Saone. After checking in the hotel, we changed to our running gear and ran downtown to get to know the city. By the river, we saw the longest boat ever: I needed two pictures to fit it in:

Chalon is a beautiful city with a nice medieval city centre.

I thought that, in case we had enough time, we could pick a small geocache in the neighborhood of this carved tree:As V was with me, I wanted to show her how easy it is for me (after 700+ found geocaches) to pick this one… but we did not find it even after 15 minutes of climbing around the wooden statue and then it was time to retun to the hotel. Plese notice that the word ‘dinner’ made me run back uphills with negative splits.

Giving up is not  good option – not in life and certinly not in geocaching. So this morning, I got up at 6 and ran back to the mysterious place. Luckily I found the small continer today:So alltogether, I ran 7+9 km in Salon. Tomorrow I will be reporting from a small village of Villecroze.