Czech Republic

In September I headed east, to czech out the Birrell 10k night run, through the historic city of Prague. For this trip I put my fate in the hands of Facebook, and asked if anyone knew anyone, who had a space in their home for me. Amazingly/randomly/thankfully a friend in Scotland had a friend in the Czech Republic, who went to school with a friend, who had an apartment with his wife, in the suburbs of Prague, who for some reason said yes to having a stranger from Scotland bed down on the livingroom floor. So off I went and spent a weekend exploring human remains, silver mines and the streets of the city, by day and by night.

Petr and Petra welcomed me into their home late that Friday night and we had a stilted, shy chat (in their third language) before heading to bed. Petr and Petra, it turned out, are early to bed and early to rise. After my journey I was pretty happy to get a good sleep, and this was particularly useful as when asking me what time I wanted breakfast, Petr suggested “6 or 7 o’clock?”. I said 7ish..

Waking up bright, early and refreshed on Saturday morning, my hosts made me some traditional Czech krupičná kaše, or semolina porridge, for breakfast. Krupičná kaše is served warm, and topped with melted butter, cocoa powder and cinnamon. It was a bit weird for me, as in Scotland semolina is a a dessert, and we used to groan whenever it was served at our dinner table. Being older, hopefully wiser and definitely more polite than my child-self, I enthused about breakfast and it actually did set me up pretty well for a day of traipsing around. 

With my race scheduled for later that evening, the only other thing I had researched before travelling was the Sedlec Ossuary, about an hour’s train travel out of Prague. Unassuming from the outside, if it wasn’t for the tour buses lined up, you could be forgiven for bypassing this church in the sleepy town of Kutna Hora. However, the Sedlec Ossuary is also known as the Church of Bones. Decorated with the bones of more than 40,000 human skeletons, it makes for a pretty unique interior.

I then headed onto Kutna Hora proper and spent a sunny morning wandering around, ending up in people’s gardens, wedding photos and a gypsy camp-site, all by accident. As the Sun rose high in the sky, threatening my pale Scots skin, I decided to take a trip down a silver mine to escape the heat. Me and ten of so others went down, down, down into the earth and scraped and squeezed our way through the old, dark tunnels. I’ve never been down a mine before, no reason to really, so it was another pretty unique interior to me. Cold, slimy and low in the roof, it made me quite glad I wasn’t a miner.

Surfacing from the mine a few miles further along than where we started, I realised I should probably be heading back to Prague, so that I could get out to Petr’s apartment for my change of clothes, trainers and bit of rest and refuel before the race. Simultaneously unfortunate for the runner in me and fortunate for the storyteller in me, this bit didn’t pan out quite as I’d planned. I got a bit lost on the way to the bus station and missed the bus back to Prague by five minutes, so I headed to the train station and missed the train by five minutes too. Then I passed four hours in the train station, with only half a bottle of water and a pack of cheesy biscuits for sustenance, and my travel guide. I read that Rough Guide cover-to-cover, I felt like I travelled all over the country from that bench in the station.. Around 5pm a train finally rolled in and I jumped aboard, and then that train got delayed and I missed my connection by five minutes, and I ended up on another, slower train back to Prague. It took me an hour to get to Kutna Hora and twice as long on the return journey.

As I travelled, I first realised that I probably didn’t have time to go back to the apartment for my change of gear. Then that I probably didn’t have time to get a hearty meal eaten and digested. And then that I didn’t even have very much time to get to the race-number collection point, which was (un)helpfully on the other side of the city from the race starting point. As I dashed across the city to the race-number place I kept getting diverted by closed roads- roads closed in anticipation of the soon-to-be-starting race. Ha! I made it there and was told that I was too late to get my proper international entry number (who knows why), but I could have a local entrant’s number as she hadn’t turned up. I had less than ten minutes to make a ten minute journey to the starting line, so I grabbed the number and pinned “Lenka F2255” to my playsuit. Yes, my playsuit. The one I had unthinkingly thrown on in the morning, my bare feet shod in plimsolls, before heading to the Church of Bones.

I got a lot of raised eyebrows and a few compliments for my “cool running suit” whilst waiting at the starting line and smiled at my well-wishers. Meanwhile, internally I worried a lot. I worried about twisting my ankle on the cobbled streets, in the dark, in my stupid shoes. I worried about not having eaten anything other than a pack of cheesy biscuits since my semolina porridge in the morning. I worried about chaffing myself in some undignified places by running in a playsuit. Most of all, I worried that I would get dehydrated, which has significantly and nauseatingly affected me in races before. I decided things were pretty desperate so at this point, as casually as I could manage, I picked up discarded, half-full water bottles and tried to increase my hydration levels as much as I could before the race began.

The Birrell 10K starts in the centre of the shopping district and there were lots of stag parties, tourists and well-wishers along the route out of town and over the River Vltava. The first bit of cobbles is covered by a thin carpet, which was sort of helpful but also sort of deceptive and I found I was constantly having to revise my falls-risk analysis (one of many transferable skills I learned at nursing school). Thankfully, over the river it was straight out east along a duel carriageway and out around the streets of a housing estate. Not exactly picturesque, but I was too busy looking out for water points and grabbing sugar cubes to think much about the scenery.

Doubling back on ourselves, the route then headed west, following the river towards a park area. It was dark by then and I enjoyed a good view of Prague glittering alongside the river before plunging into the park, where our path was only sporadically floodlit and started worrying about tripping up in the dark and how I would find sugar cubes when I couldn’t really see.

The route then turned towards the city streets again, up through the same tourist district to where it all began. This time lots of waiters and well-wishers from the bars and restaurants lining the route had come out to watch, and were offering water and beer, to give a thirsty runner like me a boost to get the finish line.  And I made it. Against all the odds. I know I don’t have a great track record when it comes to meticulous race preparations, but even I was surprised to have made it through this one unscathed! I may have been a bit9 delirious when I asked for this photo to get taken,

     

After races its nice to hang about, chat to other runners and generally soak up the good atmosphere. Travelling back home is always a bit melancholy. The further you travel, the less other runners you see; and slowly being red, sweaty and having a medal one becomes a bit uncool when you’re the only one on the train looking dishevelled, yet triumphant. In due course, I grabbed my bag from the storage area, bought a MacDonald’s milkshake and took the subway back to my apartment in the suburbs, with a foil blanket rustling round my legs.

By this point in the day, I was actually relishing the thought of another early bedtime, but Petr and Petra had other plans. Newly married and incredibly hospitable, they cooked up a mountain of deliciously buttery potato & onion hash for a late dinner, before insisting on opening a bottle of whisky that they had been given as a wedding present a few weeks before. Obviously I did a bit of polite British protesting first before giving in to a wee dram and a night of swapping stories.

A little tired the next day, nevertheless I forced myself to get up and dressed at 7am, lest I made a bad impression with my generous hosts. I spent Sunday refuelling with a traditional home-cooked czech roast dinner, a wander around the historic castle quarter and a climb up Petřín Tower, Prague’s omage to the la Tour Eiffel. And then, I said a fond farewell to my new best whisky buddies and headed home to London.