14.12.2019

The story of Marie Šilhová: The first time!

“My toes are frozen, I am in the skiing jacket, which I am wearing over the running one and I am still cold. That is amazing,” I told to myself. “I haven´t even started the run and I am already cold,” I told to myself again. Until the start of the eighth wave, which was mine was still half an hour left. In the last moment I was trying to give my starting number, including skis and clothes to the lady, who was admirably staring at me. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out.

 I have realized that there is no way out.“That is cool, I wouldn’t make it,” was the sentence that many people told me when I had noticed them about mine and my friend Gaby´s decision, to run Jizerska 50. I didn´t understand, why are all people so surprised. My physical condition was okay, with a bit of improvement and the improvement of a skiing technique, why shouldn´t I make it?

Surprised reactions together with approaching race were increasing, what started to make me nervous as well.

But at that moment, I was there and they wouldn ´t let me go back. And in the moment as I put the skis on my feet, I got in such an euphory that I thought that I could make those 50 km even with a finger in my nose and a half-broken wand.

Well, let´s say it this way… Imagine, that about 1000 people start to run at the same time. They block all the track and running pace stops at 4 km/ hour, so you can go with a lovely walking pace and enjoy the beauty of your country around.

But this easy-going moment didn´t last for a long time for me. Even though, I am trying to convince myself that I am not a competitive type of person, as soon as I got a chance to beat somebody, I am trying to do so. And so, I was trying as a big wave get through everybody to the head of the wave.

The control light in my head started to say, that I should have slow down, If I wanted to finish the race and not to collapse in the half. Around 20^th kilometre I felt like I was still in the beginning as I had more than a half of the race ahead. In that moment I felt the first time the load that my body was receiving. Probably more than about physical condition it is about psyche. In the moment when I started to feel a little bit anxious, thinking that my skis slip away, that my loins hurt and that I am sweaty and cold, I see an old jacket breeze in front of me. The old jacket, in which was Sváča.

One of the 4 members of a team Rum express, who had decided to run jubilee 50 Jizerska on old wooden skis in the old fashion clothes. While him, Bery, Michal and Hejnič had started from the first waves due to their good results in the previous years, me started from the 8^th and I managed to catch up on them, even get myself in front of them ( I am not supposed to talk about that half an hour as they got stuck on Jizerka).

When I looked at their exhausted faces and I felt sorry for them, in that moment I had realized that I felt ashamed that I was about to complain about being a little bit tired. “It is not going at all, but it doesn´t matter, it is an amazing experience,” said guys with the smile on their faces and I believed that they were really enjoying it.

Without them knowing it, in that moment the meeting with them had served me better than any other energetic nutrition, which packages were thrown on the track ahead of me from the earlier racers. These guys were the perfect example of what Jizerska 50 is for all of the hobby racers, those who don´t race for the place but for the race itself.

Enjoy as much as possible. The rest of the journey, I was also trying to enjoy the atmosphere, which was all over the track. Each while, I skied with somebody else, talked to him and listen to his personal story, and why he had decided to start on Jizerska 50.

Reasons were various: from pushing the friends, as a wedding anniversary gift from a husband (who really didn’t want to get rid of her), then other higher psychological intentions like closing a life chapter.

During the race, I had realized that my biggest motivation, why to run in the best possible time is an increase of my self-confidence. If had made this, pushed myself and finished in the best possible way, I would have done everything else out of the track. And I wasn´t always convinced about that.

With the people on the track, whom I saw the first and the most probably the last time as well, we had motivated each other and run as one man, however it was a personal race of each for each of us. In mine as the newcomer´s opinion the biggest magic was in that. Atmosphere. However, my got stiffen, I think that a man should always try to get better.

That is why, I need to improve my time next year from 5:42 to 5:00.