'Pame Rio' race from Delfoi to Rio, Greece 20180427

Time came to break 100km. I did try to run one in December last year, but it was finally cancelled. And then I reminded myself that last year, next to big Doliho race (from Delfoi to Ancient Olimpia, 250km), there was a "fun" run finishing in Rio, after about 111km. Checking it will be organized again this year, I signed up and hoped for the best...

Major problem was that I did not log too many kilometers this year, mostly preparing for half marathon in March and then a full marathon on April 1st. Then only after the marathon race I did two fairly long runs of 43 and 50km. Way too few for a preparation to run 100+.

Good news was I found company and we decided to run the whole thing together with my friend George, no matter what (the other good news, during the race, was that actually we did quite similar, so there was no issue of one slowing the other down :-D).

The race day was very hot and humid with no wind at all. We did not take this into consideration strongly enough and still tried to maintain planned ~5:15/km in the first part of the race. Therefore problems started as early as on 40th, while still day. What was even worse, the heat actually was a big factor until about midnight! So, heat, overdoing the first kilometers and lack of training, all this came together at about 70-80th kilometer when my quads were dead! I had to somehow modify my running step to save quads and instead work more with shins and achilles. It worked quite ok for another 2hrs or so, but from 95th km, I had pretty much completely dead legs. Somehow we got to Nafpaktos (station at ~97km). Only ~13km to go ("only"). And with run-walk routine we started to clock down the remaining kilometers: first getting to 100th with time chip, then getting to the bridge and finally reaching Rio for the finish.

Rank 1st and 2nd with George. Official time 12:30'52".
DONE! 100k (+11 :-D) crossed from the to-do list :-P
Next: 100k on the trails...