Justfindit.se Magazine

Vertical love - enjoying the heights

Vertical love - enjoying the heights. This run was not just a coincidence. The importance of managing a challenge like this must be respected. And it is respected, especially by people who understand it.

Do you remember our article about the M-15 run? It was a run in Malmö, in southern Sweden. You can read that reportage here: https://justfindit.se/magazine/?p=4146 . It was just a result of an inspiration that was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina.

As an author and owner of this magazine, I have decided to write a reportage about this new run. I call it Sa-14-Bj run. Why so?

Sa is Sarajevo, 14 is kilometres and Bj is the shortness of the mountain called Bjelasnica. (Just outside of Sarajevo.) I managed this distance twice before but with my mountain bike. This time I decided to make it as a run. You can read the first inspiration source of this adventure here: https://justfindit.se/magazine/?p=1090

The preparation

The Sa-14-Bj run was both mentally and physically prepared. For this challenge I warmed up with 131,1 km. 5 km of those was managed in Sarajevo city (Sa-5) and 5 km on a lower mountain, Trebevic, outside of the city (Sa-5-Tr), just as a preparation. In that last mentioned case my vertical challenge was 159 meters. I made it almost fully satisfied. That was unfortunately the first time I gave up the absolute goal. And it was caused by very hard uphill as a part of this distance. Instead of 7-8 planned kilometers it ended up with 5.

However, the Sa-14-Bj run started early in the morning on July 6. This time I was not alone in my adventure. I had one of my friends with me. We both started with a huge dose of optimism. He had a bike so I was the only one who ran. The first 3 km was managed in 26 minutes comparing to the bike tour and around 30 minutes. At that point we just reached a sharp curve that led us in to another phase of this run. It was a key to the ”No return” part. Now we simply had to trust ourselves and try to distribute both energy and strength on the right way.

Running methods

We had to make some breaks during this adventure. The first one was just before 3km. Then it was at 6km and then some more at 8, 9 and 12 kilometres. It was very exhausting to run upwards so I had to mix running and fast walking the most part of this run. But the speed difference between running and walking was not so big so the methods of moving up did not differ so much in time. The pace varied also and was much lower comparing to the normal horizontal running with none or only some shorter uphills.

With the time and as we came closer to the goal I noticed that my body was so exhausted so that I was not able to run upwards at all. I tried but I had to interrupt it much. The run required 1,371 calories which is around 200 calories more than running 15 km horizontally. 200 calories is what we normally burn when running 2,5 km. In this case we can say that running 14 km was like running 16,5 km horizontal distance.

Respecting the challenge

What is the conclusion? It was successful! It was both an adventure and a run. Very planned from the first beginning and finally it was realized. Being a part of small group of local inhabitants who had done something like this is huge. Not many of around 500.000 people are able to manage something like this. That is why the importance of managing a challenge like this must be respected. And it is respected, especially by people who understand it.