I’ve been hanging out at two different tracks in the last few days. In Friday I was in Prague for the European Indoor Athletics, on Saturday back home at my local running club, running at a pace that probably doesn’t even count as a warm up for most of those professional athletes.
If you’ve never been to an athletics meet - do it. This was my first indoor event and it was utterly fantastic. The atmosphere - even early on the first day of competition - was lively, with huge roars greeting any Czech competitors. I got to watch the awesome Katarina Johnson-Thompson on her way to gold in the Pentathlon, if not, alas, the world record - though that surely is just a matter of time. What you see in the stadium that the TV can’t catch is fascinating - the warm-ups, the stretches, the drills, the pigeon-paces the athletes take to measure their long jump run up ...
An indoor arena with its 200m track also gives you a real sense of just how fast the sprinters are - blink and you will miss the 60m hurdles (or Richard Kilty blasting past to gold) - and just how high they jump. I think pole vaulting god Renauld Lavillenie should have been given a shot at jumping over Prague castle. He would probably have sailed over.
As for my own running - Prague is not the flattest city and cobblestones make for interesting footing, but I had some treadmill slogs and one particularly glorious run to and round Letna Park, which overlooks the city and has views so fabulous you just have to stop for a breath to appreciate. Being surrounded by athletes at the event itself, you also can’t help but want to pull the trainers on and run, run run.
So how was your weekend running, did you catch any of the athletics on TV - and can I persuade you to go and watch some athletics live yourself?
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