trail running

The hardest 400 m of the World: the "Red Bull 400".

/ Ale Santuz / 2 Comments

Have you ever tried to run a “full throttle” 400 m? It’s bloody difficult. But…what if your quarter mile race included a sensible climb? Let’s say something like 37° of maximum slope. Let’s say half on slippery grass and half on the glassy concrete of a…Ski Jump! Pretty weird, isn’t it? Well, this is the “Red Bull 400”, a race held in Tauplitz/Bad Mitterndorf’s Ski Jumping facility.

With an average gradient of 45% and a nickname of “Highway to Hell” given by the athletes, this is probably the most difficult 400 m race in the World! Take a look at the video: aren’t you curious to give it a try?

We could organize a bus for next year’s race! Take a look at the official website, it’s an interesting collection of news and articles (they discuss, for example, the difficult choice of the right shoes for this strange competition). Just to let you know, the 2011 winner was the “Turkish chamois” Ahmed Arslan, with a time of 5’04″58. Keep on running, people!

Here you can find a list of my running-related posts. Now shut down the notebook and have a run! 
Posts about training:
Posts about races:

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Trail running in the dark: 4^ Notturna di Sant’Antonio – Miane (TV), Italy.

/ Ale Santuz / Leave a comment
Shhh…silence, please. I’m in the woods. On a trail. It’s completely dark except from the light emanated from my headlamp. Shhh…silence, please.
Can you feel it?
This race is organized from a small group of running enthusiasts, there’s no promotion, no advertising. It just happens every year, since 2008, and if you know it, you do it. Simple. As simple as the route: 500 m of positive slope, 500 m of downhill, 8.3 km the total distance; a gift for no more than 50 lucky runners, choosing a different way to spend their Saturday night.
The trail to discover during the race, meter after meter, is a typical “troi” (“trail” in local dialect), with a mixture of hard and soft slopes and a stunning panorama on the “Valsana” (“Healthy Valley”): it’s difficult to find such dark places and hence seeing so many stars. Something that makes you feel lucky and erases all the pain. But the idyll is roughly stopped by a silence-breaking voice, right in the middle of the second climb. A man that convinced his wife to come and run this charming race, suddenly says with a sort of dyspnea: “after this climb my wife will ask for divorce; I must enjoy these moments as much as I can”. It’s a good training to improve your VO2max: running uphill and laughing as a child! Give it a try!
As usual, for the record, I post the results, the GPS track of the race and some pictures of last year’s start. Keep on training, people!

1
Ivan GERONAZZO
38’30”
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2
Daniele CASTELLI
39’07”
+37″
3
Paolo GRAVA
39’11”
+41″
4
Guido BUSETTI
39’14”
+44″
5
Maurizio FURLAN
40’06”
+1’36”
6
Alessandro SANTUZ
40’33”
+2’03”
7
Alberto FURLAN
41’30”
+3’00”
8
Denis MENEGHEL
41’50”
+3’20”
9
Marco BORTOLOTTO
42’40”
+4’10”
10
Carlo BOSCOLO
45’19”
+6’49”