Completed: 8 May 2016
The biggest challenge: inexperience
The catchphrase: “Will is stronger than heavy legs.”
The 10,600 runners at the start were about to conquer the marathon course, just like me and my tracker Lukáš Nožička. Even though we had honestly trained, we had never run that length before, so we could only guess what it would do to us.
Even as we were making our way through the busy Old Town Square before 9 am to put our stuff in a depository, wish good luck to other runners we knew, and take a photo with the Light for the World organization, we were overwhelmed by that special “marathon atmosphere”. Thousands of runners of different nationalities, ages, and experience levels in one place with one goal: to beat that magic 42 km milestone.
We trotted a bit and got prepared in the start corridors before the gun went off. The weather was favourable, and we enjoyed the first kilometres, plus we met another blind runner with a tracker from Spain right at the start of the route.
“So, one half marathon behind me and one ahead of me,” I kept repeating to myself as my legs started to get heavy halfway through and dark thoughts raced through my head. Why am I running this anyway? Not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard. I want to beat myself and show that I can do it.
But I wasn’t alone on the trail – unfortunately, the tracker’s ion drink didn’t work well for him so we had to slow down a bit, but after a while we picked up the pace again.
The last 2,000 metres were the longest I’d ever had to run. My legs went low to the ground, but my willpower was unbreakable. We crossed the finish line in a time of 4 hours 1 minute with huge relief, and I was smiling with happiness while my guide was going to faint at the railings.
A big thanks to Lukáš because he didn’t give up and fought until the end.
