26 11 2011
This is how I feel after I ran the "Le Puy-Firminy" night race last Sunday. 70 kilometers (mixed roads and trails), 1500 meters positive slope, close to my birth town, St-Etienne (the track on Garmin Connect unfortunately has bugs for the profile, sorry for this....this is apparently a bug in Garmin Connect as pyTrainer shows the track very well.
And running this by night, starting at midnight and arriving at....09:16 the next day. A full night running.
Such "ultra" experience is completely different from marathon running. In marathons, you mostly try keeping a constant pace all along the race, running very close to your limits all along the race.
Very long distances involve managing much more than keeping a constant pace. Being able to run (and walk) for many hours requires being very careful at the start of the race, controlling the pace and save energy for the last part of the race. Climbing is most of the time done by walking (except for the very first runners) and going down for kilometers is very hard for legs, even at slow paces.
Night running is also making things a lot different. Particularly in a quite small race like this one, it means running alone most of the time. And, by alone, I really mean alone. You and your head lamp, that's all.
I am very happy about the way I managed this race. I reached the 32km mark, where an important food/drink point was organised, in a little bit more than 3 hours 15 minutes, where I stopped about 7-8 minutes. That was followed by about 5 kilometers downhill, at 6%, on a paved road, which is really killing legs.
The marathon distance was reached in about 5h05, more or less what I planned, but that race is known to be harder in its second half. And completing a marathon, *then* knowing that you still have 2/3 of a marathon to run is kinda challenging..:-)
Another important moment of the race was the 55 kilometer mark. This, because this was the longest distance I ever ran in a single race (in March, for the Paris Ecotrail race). Of course, the longer you run, the harder are legs and what was expected happened to me: I had cramps in both legs, at the worst moment, around km 64, when the track brutally goes down for 150 meters in a small canyon, then goes up for about 200 meters. Indeed, I completed kilometer 66 in....22 minutes (I see my marathon runners friends laughing here).
This is indeed where you know if you're strong and motivated enough : not abandoning, continue despite cramps, waiting for them to disappear...and finally complete the race.
It was really worth it anyway : running by night is really magic. I still remember the though moments at 5am, in the moonlight, alone on a road...and so happy to be there..:-)
That race was the last one for me this year. I followed my plans (the only regret being not beating my record at Berlin marathon).
Next year plans include two marathons: probably Caen ("Les Routes de la Liberté" along the D-Day beaches in Normandy) in June and another one during Fall. I'll also push my limits a bit further with the 80km race of Ecotrail, arriving at Eiffel Tower first floor after running through forests in the SW area of Paris....and probably again that 70km race in November. Once you've tried ultra races, you don't want to stop..:-)
Until the end of the year....recovery...and training. After all, Ecotrail is only in 4 months..:-)
posted at: 07:09 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry
Status for D-I level 1 (core D-I files):
Status for D-I level 2 (packages that have localized material that may appear during default installs, such as iso-codes, tasksel, etc.):
Status for D-I level 3 (packages that have localized material that may appear during non-default installs, such as win32-loader)
posted at: 07:07 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry
Bug #640000 was reported as of September 1st. We're now approching the 3 months mark for 10,000 bugs. It either means that Debian development rate is slowing down...or that we're in the way to stabilize our development version. To be honest, I think that both reasons can be invoked.
So, we're indeed halfway in the road from bug #600000 to bug #700000. Remenber the bug #700000 prediction contest?
Bug #600000 was reported as of October 12th 2010, So, it took 1 year, 1 month and 13 days to reach #650000. It means that, with the same rate, we should reach bug #700000 at the very very beginning of 2013.And thus, the closest bets as of now are those by David Prévot and, sorry, myself.
There's of course plenty of time (and a release) to change this.
posted at: 05:26 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry