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Feb 23
2021

The Slovak Ultra Trail team again joins for the 170 km Ultra Trail

Lizzy Hawker

We were set to welcome elite runner, Marián Priadka, from the Slovak Ultra Trail Team to the 2020 edition of the 170 km Ultra Tour! We’re really happy that he’ll try again for 2021. We asked him some questions to get to know a little more about him….

Q. Can you remember how you first heard of UTMR, or what attracted you to the UTMR challenge? The first information I got about the UTMR race was from my friends from the Slovak trail runners community. After that I visited the race website and especially watched the Youtube and Facebook videos of the UTMR, which are really attractive. That’s the race, I would like to visit. 🙂 O preteku UTMR som sa dozvedel od kamarátov z bežeckej komunity. Následne som si pozrel videá na youtube a facebooku.


Q. What aspect of the race (or parts of the course) are you looking forward to? Until now I was in Switzerland only when travelling by car to Italy or France for ultra races back in 2018. Already at that time, sitting in the van, I thought about running in the mountains of Switzerland one day in the future. Now I am looking forward to visit those mountains and to see the whole UTMR course. Cez Švajčiarsko som zatiaľ len prechádzal autom na preteky do Talianska.Už vtedy sa zrodila myšlienka,že raz by som si tam chcel ísť zabehať.Teším sa na celú trať.

Q. Will you be training this year with UTMR specifically in mind or just keeping in form through racing? When I’m planning a race, I’m also planning to get prepared for it as well as possible. That means full focus, physically and mentally. For UTMR I will be collecting more elevation for sure, so my legs will be ready to face the challenging ascents.  Plánujem sa postupne pripraviť na každý závod najlepšie ako viem.Na UTMRzačnem zbierať viac výškových metrov,aby boli nohy pripravené na nadmernú záťaž.

Q. Does Pizza work for you at checkpoints? What do you rely on to keep you going? Maybe not pizza during the course at a checkpoint. Never tried. 🙂 I am mostly running on fruits and other vegan food plus energy bars and gels. But pizza at the finish, sounds good :-). Tentokrát pravdepodobne pobežím na vlastnú päsť.Uvidíme ako to bude prebiehať.Strategický presun od 1 kontrólneho sťanovišta k druhému.Každým krokom bližšie k cieľu.

Q. Do you have any secret tips to share with other runners that you’ve learned over the years, which increase your chance of finishing? I’m dreaming about the race and imagine how I will be running on that course. I want to go step by step, from one checkpoint to other. Not to think about the whole route, but about the smaller pieces. The course parameters are a big challenge. Snívam o tom preteku a predstavujem si ako to asi pobežím.Parametre hovoria za všetko.Treba tomu prispôsobiť aj tréningovú prípravu.

Q. Do you talk to yourself a lot when the going gets tough? What do you find helps keep you going when it’s feeling very tough? Well this varies from race to race. As first I’m trying to evaluate how tough and how serious the situation is. If it’s really tough, I go through how I could get out of the situation. I try to calm down and breathe, regain my energy, slow down the pace and continue my race. Je to rôzne. V prvom rade treba vyhodnotiť vážnosť situácie.Ako sa čím skôr z toho stavu dostať. Napr. rozdýchať to, doplniť energiu. Poprípade trochu zvolniť kým sa nezlepšia funkcie organizmu.

Thank you Marián, see you in September!

And in Slovak!

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