Schlagwort-Archive: Dark World

Dark World – Marvel Slam 2022 #3

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Third track of the Marvel Slam done.

And it was a very special one as it covered 100 miles of Hautes Fagnes finest paths. A selection of all the most interesting and beautiful spots in that area. Dark World consists of 3 loops (60k, 50k, 50k) all starting/ending at Baraque Michel restaurant/parking lot.

I – or I should say we – have a history with that place. Unforgotten runs under the most bizarre conditions. Baraque Michel has been a starting place for those ever since – but in addition to that start in the middle we entered that area from every possible direction to cover as much as possible of this special area. Memorable moments of the Legends Trail, the UTDS (Legends Edition), countless training runs and funny river or tile collection projects took place here over the years.

Some of those pictures below taken during my Dark World attempt in 2022 may help you to acknowledge the beauty – to understand it fully you may want to consider to spend a day and night or two up there.

I started Dark World on 1st of October 2022 with the rising sun at around 0800. A massive band of heavy rain flooded the area the night before and just stopped when I started (actually – I delayed my start a bit to not get completely wet from the beginning). Doing Dark World alone offered that amount of flexibility. Light rain but also some amount of sun accompanied me during the first loop. The whole area was completely covered by water. It felt good to be back in this vastness. It took me a bit more than 9 hours to finish the first 60 km loop. After a 40 min recovery in the car (repacking, refuelling, changing cloths and rest) I started the second loop at 1800 Saturday evening – totally aware that I was about to get into more serious problems.

The second loop – “Three Rivers of Pain” – is a ridiculous technical and demanding terrain. Up and down the trails close by the various rivers in Hautes Fagnes is very special. The roaring water, the slippery stones and roots – every step a challenge and 100% focus needed. All in all a not so pleasant moments in light to medium rain. I reached the car really exhausted close to 0500 Sunday morning in intensifying rain.

I decided for a longer break in the car both to recover a bit more, get completely dry, sleep a bit and wait for the most horrible part of the rain to pass. I re-started after 1 hour 20 min break onto the third loop. The first 10 km of this loop is Hautes Fagnes pure before the easiest part of the run starts. The sections down to Eupen and the transfer to Lac Gileppe are not too technical and running is the first priority. The final 18 km of the track are again demanding and full of funny twists and turns. Offtrail sections, horribly steep climbs, wet and grassy overgrown Fagnes part until its finally done.

Hautes Fagnes at its best.

31h 44m for 100 miles – 75% of the Marvel Slam done.

75%

One final run of the Marvel Slam left.

Marvel Slam 2022 Update

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Antworten

We created the Marvel Slam 2022 due to the fun we had with our small Titanic Slam in 2021. The basic idea is to promote the style of running we like most and to enable the community to participate in that. All details on the challenge and conditions can be found at acceptnolimits.eu.

Marvel Slam 2022
Marvel Slam Page @acceptnolimits.eu

With now almost 4 month into the Marvel Slam it looks like our plan does work out.

Runners who accepted and entered the competition did not complain about missing information – they know it is part of the challenge to plan and prepare yourself independent of everything around you. It is up to every individual runner when to start, to chose with whom they may want to partner or if they want to conquer one or more of the tracks alone – there is no organisation. The Marvel Slam community lives independently, useful information and experiences are shared amongst – and only amongst – the runners and help/support is offered both with and without being asked for. Exactly how we understand the concept of long-distance-running.

And what performance we already saw… We saw them fail, we saw them coming back (and once even coming back a third time) to finally conquer one of the tracks. We saw impossible situations and we saw a few of them solved nevertheless. The overall success rate of 28 attempts is 43%. So it is still more likely to fail than to succeed. We will have really interesting rest of 2022 within the Marvel Slam.

How many of the 40 runners will be able to complete all 4 tracks within the given limit of 48h/track? How many more great stories of success and failure will we told? How many of the runners will not accept their limits and go beyond?

The newest habit is to just post the live-tracking link into the Marvel Slam community group without any pre-warning and the last attempts have been started and finished of one runner alone. We like that a lot. Being remote is a nice experience. Keep on pushing.