Blizzard, whiteout and insanity. Zamieć 2019 race report [PHOTOS]

Find your thing

The dream of six loops bursts like a bubble right at the start of loop four. I set off almost without stopping, having just refilled the flask and had a banana. It's half an hour till midnight, not even the halfway time, but all I can do is crawl at the snail's pace. I stop counting the racers who overtake me up the hill. Luckily at the hairpins two girls catch up with me on their third loop. I stay with them until the top, and a nice talk helps beat the boredom of the climb.

At the windswept crest all I can see are snowflakes in the light of my lamp. There is a few degrees centigrade below zero but the windchill must be reaching double figures. Despite having thick gloves I can't feel my fingers. Not the first time tonight, but that's typical with me.

One night on Skrzyczne and the world's your ultra
The peak's your temple but the climb ain't free
You'll pay with sweat on every loop of snow white
And if you're lucky then your arse won't freeze
May your guardian angel take good care of thee

At the hut I have a few pics taken by the wonderful photographer Karolina Krawczyk. Zamieć wouldn't be the same without her. Doesn't even matter that all will probably come out with my mouth full as I was chewing on a chocolate bar.

I hoped to use the loo but the door to the main room is closed. It's impossible to find a place protected from the wind outside, so I'm forced to look for my tool in the freezing cold. Just don't do it against the wind...

It's 2:30 am. I run down the turnaround and throw myself down the Wuthering Heights for the fourth time. The wind is blowing as never before. Or maybe like in 2015. Back then the blizzard blew the footprints over too, but now there's also a total whiteout. I run down the hill the way I like, e.g. fast. In my headlamp I can only see the fog and snowdrift, all that with maybe 3-metre visibility. Only sometimes I can discern a blinking marking light or a reflective tape. A few minutes later I take a fall into the snow just before the edge of a cliff. Really would prefer not to fall down there. I must have left the course. Gotta get back up, just don't know how far.

One night on Skrzyczne makes a hard man humble
Not much between despair and ecstasy
One night on Skrzyczne and the tough guys tumble
It's blizzard, whiteout and insanity
I can feel the devil running next to me

Yeah, blizzard, whiteout and insanity... that's the name of the game. And not just one devil but two. Namely Renata and Łukasz, a married couple I know from another race. Tonight they've been overtaking me up the hill and I was catching up on downhills. Now we all lost our way in the same place. I climb up some twenty metres to see a tree stub with a green trail mark and call out for them. One of the top runners speeds past me. We are safe on the right trail again.

Again I find my inner downhill demon. But what I make up at the breakneck slide, I lose at the bumpy flat. Łukasz and Renata catch up and go ahead. The whole "downhill" to the finish line is just one long crawl in the powder with a few steep and nice bits thrown in for fun. Below the clouds we can now see the lights of Szczyrk. At the last 3 km-long straight I'm happy to catch up with the two girls I met at the climb before. We run or walk like ducks, making fun of it together.

I drop them at the last steep downhill and cross the line at 3:46 am. That's 15 hours and 46 minutes since we started. I will not suddenly find a superhuman strength to squeeze two more sub-4h loops. It's not the "spring" race from last year where I ran seven loops and when I was in a better shape. The conditions are as they are but also I've just run out of energy. The time for the last one seems unlimited but I feel so knackered that just moving my arse out there will become quite a challenge.

Celebratory lap

Bullion. Pasta with stuff. Talking to fellow runners who are too battered to do one more loop. Tomato soup. Cola. Tea. Changing my clothes in the dropbag room, warming up, more chinwag. Banana, dried fruit, cookies. More cola. Two hours pass this way.

Time to make a move. No musings or what-ifs, just go ahead like a mule. "Push on! These words flowing in my veins...". At 5:45 am the measuring mat beeps when I cross it. I walk up at a relaxed pace but that's the fastest I can go now. At the steep traverse I switch my headlamp off. For a long time the sun cannot decide whether to show up between the horizon and the clouds, finally preferring not to. The crest is covered in clouds, wind and blizzard. At the hut I take another rest.

The Wuthering Heights are in the complete whiteout. The wind still tries to blow my head off and the footprints are blown over. I run fast but carefully, doing my best not to get lost again. It only gets quieter at the bottom of the first downhill.

The steep slide is pure fun. So is the flat bit, as I can already smell the finish line. Spruces covered with frozen snow take fantastic shapes of bell towers, birds' beaks or aliens. Just below the vertical I catch up with Aga. I once met her before at he HQ. We stay together till the end of our last loop. She is doing her fourth. We have a nice chat, there is no hurry, it's our celebratory lap. We cross the line for the last time at 10:14 am.

In the meantime all my Polish-Belgian-Dutch-German-New Zealand mates show up, one by one. Daniel did the most loops, five just like me. His first four were way faster but he got so knackered that he needed a kip in our rented house, and then came back for one more in the morning. While we're sitting at the table drinking beer, he still has icicles in his beard. Looks like we are bound to do the same number every year. Previously we both clocked seven. Marta also did great. In her first ever ultra race, and in winter, she ran 56 km and 3600 vertical metres in four loops!

And what about my hard-fought five? 70 km with 4500 metres up is the same as I did back in 2015 and 2017. That was the minimum. The 40th place out of 180 racers is nothing to be ashamed of. As I mentioned, in a better shape I would easily do six, despite the toughest conditions in the history of Zamieć. On one hand I wish I'd done more, but on the other you can't stay at your peak all year round. I keep coming back to this race for the friendly atmosphere created by Ania and Michał with the crew and for all of you, fellow runners! Now it's time for sensible training as my next mountain challenges come only in June, and the second half of the year will bring two most important goals.

Kamil Weinberg