Shanghai Running Magazine Shanghai Running Q2 2014. Volume 2 | Page 24

Hivernal Trail, The Netherlands
by Dave Dudek

I’m back, I was pleasantly surprised to receive another opportunity to write a race report for SH
Running since I exceeded their
word count nearly 10 fold (I guess
they heard good feedback on my
Angkor Wat article in Issue #1 – or
most probably they just needed
some more content). As my past
readers will know I love to run but
also use it as a reason which synergistically fuels my other passion
which is travel, especially to exotic
locales.
I was contacted by two ex Shanghai Hashers (DDM and BtC) who
had moved 1.5 years ago to Den
Hag, and we kept in touch and
have done a few hashes and runs
(I convinced them to go to Iceland
with me last year for an Ultra).
They advised me of a 30km race
in the mountain area (ok hilly)
of South Netherlands in a place
called Heerlen. I looked this up
on a map and saw the run would
be taking place in the very bottom
end of the country, which appears
on a map to look like a deformed
male appendage. This was all I
needed to know as I haven’t been
to the testicle part of the country
and I saw that I could mix in a
visit the day before to Maastricht,
a well-known city in the Netherlands with about 120k people (so
not even in the top 20 cities and
would register in china as a very
small tier 6 city).
The race was being held on Sunday with an 11am start, quite a
late start for a race, so I took a
train from Amsterdam (2.5hr) to
Maastricht with my Jamaican/Ca24

nadian/British (ok she is a Mutt)
friend, and we did some exploring
during the afternoon. Quite a
beautiful city built on both sides
of the Meuse river. We also notice
bright colors of Yellow, Orange
and Green hanging from many of
the buildings in the squares and
were advised these were the official
colors of Carnival which they
would be having; a huge celebration in a few weeks time.
My old SH friends joined us
later in the evening for an Italian
dinner to Carbo load, and most
of us consumed a bit more than
expected (wine and beer). My
friend DDM recounted her past 4
months training regiment which
seemed to have been sparked a
bit when I loaned her my copy
of the book Born to Run. [as I
write this my “Boundless” TV
show friends are running with
the Tarahumara Indians in the
Copper Canyon – can’t wait to see
season 2 which comes out later
this year] This book was one of
the motives to convince her to join
a proper running group and also
make the switch to Minimalist
shoes running. The excitement
and emotions of her explaining
how she started her training 4
months earlier with only running
1 min on front of foot then 1 min
walk (for 20 min) and each week
building up until now she recently
was able to do 10km on her Vibram 5 Fingers. DDM explained
that she was always in pain when
she ran in her past traditional style
and going to minimalist shoes and
learning how to properly run from
© Shanghai Running 2014

the running club has changed her
whole outlook on running. DDM
has lost quite a bit of weight as she
is now able to train much more as
doesn’t have the pain for the 1st
time in her life. She also advised
that she is has been setting Personal Bests on nearly every run since
she has built up to 10km. This
really interested me as I know I
have terrible form and run on the
back side of my foot; my friends
can always hear when approaching from behind as I have a loud
clomp thud clomp thud noise. In
fact a neurologist hasher in AH3
advised me that she is concerned I
will not be able to run in 5 years if
I don’t improve my form. I &