4.4.2019

Story of Michal Čech: Sign in the snow

It is 1974. Before I was fifteen, I was only skiing down-slope. But now my parents bought me running skis. And not just any running skis. Beautiful, light-brown Artis Triumph, for 450 Korunas, twice the price of the classical wooden planks. These skis had a white plastic running surface, unseen miracle on running skis of that time, with these I was able to achieve awesome speed down hill. So I started to discover the winter routes in the snow covered Jizerské mountains.

I learned waxing by the trial and error method, or from whatever I found in magazines. My father was of the opinion, that klisters belong under the heels, while hard waxes on the surface, almost always. It worked near the spring or on ice, but for most of the winter you so much snow stuck to your skis, you could climb a tree. I started to be confident to go for longer trips, further into the mountains. But one trip made for pretty explosive Christmas. We used to celebrate Christmas usually on Maxovská chalet. We went cross-country skiing on the Christmas day morning. Just for a while. But the running was smooth and so I went a little further into the mountains, for the route through Nová louka and Královka. Without food, of course. After two hours I would eat nails and I arrived home after dark. My parents spent the last hour running outside the house, ready to call the Mountain Rescue. First, I was talked-to outside the chalet. Then my parents went to wish the neighbours Merry Christmas while I, hungry out of my mind, ate two dry buns. When they returned, the bomb went off in earnest. You see, the buns were prepared to be fried for the fish soup and their disappearance made my mother incandescent. The holidays were truly Italian-style, I was not allowed to enjoy my skis too much, because I had to report my every movement.

Jizerska 50 was becoming famous and the starting line was just a few hills away on Hrabětická meadow. The story of the dead mountain climbers was widely publicised, the number of participants broke record every year, so I, as a seventeen year old boy, decided to go and see the start as a spectator. What I saw took my breath away. Misty plane full of people, thousands of skiers, the start premature by several minutes, and then everything disappeared up hill beneath Královka and the Hrabětická meadow was deserted. The next year, 1977, the number of participants broke a record, I think around 7,000 people. When the crowd started prematurely, as usual, I found Prim watches stamped in the snow at the starting line. Someone’s watch strap broke and the watch stopped in the moment of the start: three minutes to nine. Maybe it was a sign...

The last January Sunday in 1980 I was at the starting line for the first time as well. I didn’t like dry training very much then, due to a lack of snow I have run just over 60km on skis, so I wasn’t feeling confident. Before I finished the climb to Královka with the crowd, I started to feel pain beneath my ribs and it didn’t leave me for the entire 10km to Rozmezí. My mom gave me a piece of bread and ham for the race, after one hour I discovered it is frozen solid.

By the way, later somebody shared with me, that he runs on pancakes. And it really worked! They don’t freeze, they are easy to eat, even during a longer down-hill section, and the energy helped. You just stuff them into your pocket or under the starting number and you can be sure not to run out of energy during the race. Today I use gels, but as an old-time lover I always eat two pancakes before the start and stuff one or two in my pouch, just to be sure.

But back to the première. I arrived to Jizerka after three hours and gulping a beef broth I listened to the announcement, that Zdeněk Böhm received the winner’s wreath. In the second half of the race the kilometres were vanishing and my Artis ski flew forward, I overtook dozens of people along the way and if I thought in the first half, that it was foolish to register, in the final kilometres I knew I will be back next year.

The drug was in my system, I was trapped.

I started to run more and more kilometres during the winter, before the start of Jizerka I made around 400-500 km, and it showed. During the first five races I continuously improved, from original 5:39 to 3:43 hours. I broke this time (for ever) only in 1989, when, on a super-fast snow, I made it in 3:28 hours and finished on 993 place from 6,000 competitors. I was happy. To finish in the first one thousand was my dream.