{"id":58889,"date":"2026-10-05T12:12:49","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T10:12:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/?p=58889"},"modified":"2026-10-05T12:12:50","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T10:12:50","slug":"the-morat-fribourg-race-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/the-morat-fribourg-race-success\/","title":{"rendered":"The Morat-Fribourg Race Success"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>\n

Yesterday I ran from Morat to Fribourg in a race with 17,000 other people. One of them was wearing a 34kg suit of armour. Most were in shorts and t-shirts as you’d expect. The challenge for me, wasn’t to race. It was to run the distance, without exhausting myself, without pain, and without pushing myself to the limit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a success because less than a year ago if I ran 200m my knees hurt, so gradually I built up my stamina, until I reached 5km and more with time. In so doing I gave my body time to adapt to the stress of running, reducing the likelihood of injury and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s amusing because the run is with a large starting group but you don’t run with others, you run with yourself. If I had tried to run with others then I would have blown up and suffered. By running at my own pace I managed well. What is worth noting is that because I’m a hiker, when I got tired I walked uphill. When I walk uphill though, I walk fast. I was too tired to run, but my fatigue was only for running. In the hills I was overtaking people that were walking. I was keeping up with people that were running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I walked because I saw my heart reach the red zone and I didn’t want to reach into that zone too long. I didn’t want to exhaust myself. I wanted the effort to be sustainable. It was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s funny because I was slow for my age, and for part of the runners, but I rarely run 17km and to boot it was almost all uphill and that surprised me. From the way people described it I expected the final hill to be a challenge, but for the rest to be flat undulating roads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn’t. It was long sustained uphills followed by downhills, followed by more uphills, followed by more uphills, and then arriving to the finish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is funny to do such a run because you head uphill, and you see a mass of runners ahead of you, and you see how long the climb is. You need good uphill endurance on this course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For weeks ahead of the run I thought it was 200-300m of climbing but it isn’t. It is 380 so you need good endurance, first for the amount of climbing, and secondly for the distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I succeeded in three respects. I got the time I was planning to get. I had no concerns about my knees and finally, most importantly I didn’t exhaust myself. I could have continued running, or trying to, but I suspect that I would have suffered far more today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of my secondary requirements for success was to be able to walk and more normally today, and I can. I did not want to be one of those people that you see limping at the end of the Barcelona, Munich or other events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The experience was good and I would repeat it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>Yesterday I ran from Morat to Fribourg in a race with 17,000 other people. One of them was wearing a 34kg suit of armour. Most were in shorts and t-shirts as you’d expect. The challenge for me, wasn’t to race. It was to run the distance, without exhausting myself, without pain, and without pushing myself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[255],"tags":[1060,5078,1113,1062,6290],"class_list":["post-58889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-swiss-walks","tag-challenge","tag-pacing","tag-race","tag-running","tag-success"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58889"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58891,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58889\/revisions\/58891"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}