“And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far into the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
About friendship
On friendship
This word is notorious for being thrown around in social circles—often, at a superficial level, reduced to a relationship between people who like each other and enjoy each other’s company. What this definition lacks, however, is a certain depth, a certain timelessness.
Enjoying someone’s company carries an element of conditionality (for example, going to the cinema together). Yet in a forsaken place in the middle of the night, in an unpronounceable town in Slovenia, we found something pure and unconditional.
To elaborate: there are not many people in this world who would spend nearly one hundred cold hours in isolated mountains with you, always having your back. And, to be clear, the majority of it is not enjoyable. Despite what the pictures suggest, it is often raw—reduced to primitive survival and the elements. When I saw a small headtorch at the end of the trail, fragile yet steady, burning in the midst of those colossal mountains, I couldn’t help but feel goosebumps—emotional, even. Just two people, and miles of nothing. Sun, rain, snow—no external force could interrupt the simple notion of staying together.
I am deeply moved by his optimism and relentless pursuit of the same goal. Without him, there would have been no Triglav crossing. Twice my age, with entirely different hobbies outside this small sport, we found each other by accident. I happened to crack a joke during a running event, and the rest is history. Together we covered 200 km around the Oosterschelde National Park, and before that, 155 km through the Frisian landscapes in winter.
There are things that overshadow the simple notion of getting from A to B. For me, this friendship—and our shared passion, our connection to the mountains and the wild—is among them. The most valuable lessons are taught outside the walls where we expect to find them. There is no theoretical framework; some things must simply be felt and experienced. No coach or curriculum can provide a state of being. And just like love, these moments often appear when we least expect them.
This whole journey was about so much more than merely moving forward, day in and day out.
Copyright ©Daniel Podzimek
Mountains & Sanctuaries
Every human searches for a sanctuary—a place of serenity and calm, a sense of timelessness in a fast-paced world. Historically, this could be a temple or a church, a place where one could devote oneself and worship. This is mine. My sanctuary. And geographically speaking, it is indeed as close as one can get to the constellations of the sky. It certainly feels that way.
Here, one can pay tribute to the past while embracing the future. I bring stories to the mountains, and the mountains become my stories— a red thread guiding me through life, a source of endless energy. We are absorbed into something, a landscape larger than ourselves, a place where both the lightness and the heaviness of being can thrive. A beacon of perspective. An oasis of solitude. The soul and spirit always return renewed.
Copyright © Daniel Podzimek
A homage to mountain running & all the triumphs and miseries that originate from it
We should be one hundred hours in by now, I quietly whisper to myself, realising my eyes have been open for roughly the same span of time. My mind has been reduced to a tabula rasa—a blank slate. My legs are somehow in the flow—in a strange, detached way—while I myself feel reduced to a kind of modern stoic, a literary movement I paradoxically hated most during my university years.
This is not why I started this journey—nor running in general, for that matter—I tell myself. To understand “the personal why of ultrarunning,” we must delve deeper than this fleeting snapshot: me clinging to an isolated chain somewhere on a lonely mountain peak whose name I do not know, questioning the essence of it all. The seeming banality of being lost somewhere far, far away—feeling hopelessly like an Englishman in New York.
Of course, there is more to it, I think. Maybe I should return to a few hours earlier that day. In an almost Bukowskian fashion, we found something we cared about deeply, something we loved enough to be reduced to ashes by. Everyone, I hope, will one day find that one thing worth being reduced to ashes for. Perhaps it was the fear of ultimately becoming a dusty bookshelf in a long-forgotten library without ever finding it.
I looked around. The cold metal chain I mentioned earlier had been replaced by a chain of tiny, glistening human dots crawling through vast mountain cathedrals—the religious centres described by the Russian climber Anatoli Boukreev. Those little, humble humans carried only a spark of hope, each with a small headtorch as their burning fuel, diving deeper into the third night. Each had a personal reason for attempting the seemingly absurd. “Just don’t mention how far it still is,” they joked when another reflective sign appeared.
The absurd has its own fascination. Only in moments with unknown endings can we truly explore the intricate layers of the human soul. I vividly recall Conrad Anker smiling and proclaiming: they—mountaineers—like the hard life. We are not averse to suffering. There is plenty of meaning in good suffering, too. The ultimate goal is to keep that little fire burning—through storm, hail, and thunder. It doesn’t have to burn brightly; it just must not die. For me, that has always been the ultimate celebration of the human spirit.
The essence of it all is painfully simple on the surface: move yourself from A to B without losing hope. But, as with all good things in life, the surface hides far more.
There is also a more serious, more sombre element to this urge for alpinism—for the wild. The parallels with society are easy to draw: things in our lives often come too easily. Our entire structure of living rests on a cult of comfort. We traded long journeys on foot for corporate subways, carrying job titles our own families cannot understand, and in doing so we lost our spark for adventure. Out in the open expanses, there is no boardroom in which to negotiate with Zeus for a reduction in thunder and lightning. We are exposed to a broad range of unforgiving elements. The dichotomy between safe and unsafe dissolves, and so we must relinquish a portion of our proudly defended comfort. Effort is required. We lose the illusion of control we cling to in our infamous “9–5 until the weekend” lives. All that remains is a complex alpine cocktail—a sip of cherished aqua vitae—of vulnerability and joy that cannot be found in a meticulously planned trip.
When all possible avenues of adaptation have been exhausted, we are left only with what unites us, rather than divides us: faith. Although often used in religious contexts, my understanding of faith has drifted far from that. (Fortunately, Aldous Huxley’s father considered mountaineering equivalent to churchgoing, granting us the possibility of escaping all such rituals.) I see faith as a human emotion that grants peace in the present moment. An exclamation to life itself. An assertion, in the face of whatever awaits on that particular ascent, that what lies ahead is worth fighting for.
Running is a tool for much more than movement. Bernd Heinrich described it as one of our biological origins, perhaps the simplest of all forms: few things are easier than striding forward on foot. Through the repetition of that simple harmony, we transcend into something so rhythmical that it becomes, simultaneously, peaceful and wild. Movement has been the essence of life for millennia. And although we no longer need to run for our hamburgers, perhaps we should run a bit more as a celebration of humanity.
Few things are more moving than an enormous, seemingly emotionless granite block illuminated by the rising sun. Life is full of contradictions. Twelve hours later, that same block is no longer illuminated—sunlight being one of the few certainties in high alpine terrain. My legs are still carrying me somewhere, location and destination unknown. Yet the reason to return has always been clear: the appeal of running back to something you love has always outweighed the urge to run away from something you do not.
Perhaps romance is that one mountain goat, that one glacier, or that one lake waiting peacefully around the corner in the midst of chaos—a magical world ruled by lactic acid, muscle cramps, and severe sleep deprivation. A world where meaning is found in the darkest night—always the fourth—and comfort is found in the fifth.
Nowadays, our arteries are coated with biochemical substances and our legs give up too soon. “We are not tired yet,” the muscle fibres scream. Running is a celebration in which rationality should not intervene too quickly. In the end, it remains a festival of the heart. Amid all the chaos, there is calmness too. It is a hymn, telling us little by little that the right path has been chosen—not the paved road most travelled, but a rocky, crooked trail that leaves room for imagination.
Tracing back through history, I wonder what industrialists like Edison or Henry Ford would think if they could see how our sense of pioneering has been partly demolished by the comfortable lifestyles their inventions enabled. But the nostalgia and excitement that mountains evoked in me as a child have never been replicated by our beloved Dutch cities—not that this makes them any less worthy of living in.
Fast forward. We are a few years past 1952—the year of the only triple gold feat in running history—while my greatest running hero is still alive and competing. Never before had a packed Finnish stadium shouted “Zatopeka!” so loudly. Helsinki erupted. Now we are in Melbourne, years later, at the Olympic Games. Here he supposedly spoke the almost mythical words: “Men, today we die a little,” referring to the blistering Australian heat that day (and perhaps to his diminishing physical endurance).
Retrospectively, I’m certain dear Emil knew the little secret well: that by dying a little on race day, we gain a little more life. He carried this truth with a joie de vivre that coloured his life and inspired the people of Czechoslovakia during a turbulent revolution. It is no secret that thousands read about him, hoping that some of this joie de vivre would infect them. And it did—even in Wrocław Square during the invasion of communist armies. That dark page in history tore apart the Olympic ideal that Emil cherished so deeply.
In ultrarunning, participation often matters far more than winning—true to the timeless Olympic spirit. There are no multimillion-dollar checks here. There is a warm handshake, the same for the winner and the final finisher. Perhaps time becomes less important when fifty hours lie ahead of you. It is one of the primary reasons I divorced the modern city marathon.
Now we are twenty-five hours into the race and still moving forward—albeit at a much slower pace. My nerves send brief, worrisome signals, but my mind enjoys it all too much to care, deliberately ignoring most external inconveniences.
My mind drifts toward primitive thoughts: the smell of firewood, alpine meadows, the quiet intoxication of altitude. Despite the incomplete panorama in this cruel rocky massif, I feel more alive than ever.
Warm memories arise—simple things from the past. All the while, I try to manage my body temperature through the cold night. The finish line is still far too distant to estimate; only fools attempt such predictions and risk chasing a fata morgana. Yet the mantra remains alive as ever: runners until the race is run.
We are one hundred and twenty hours in, and the only thing that keeps one going is the belief that it will soon feel better again. Mountain running is a love–hate relationship. The mountains owe us nothing. Reinhold Messner is famous for his blunt assessment: “Mountains are not fair or unfair; they are just dangerous.” And one must remember the basic triad after so many hours:
- it is always farther than it looks,
- it is always taller than it looks,
- it is always harder than it looks.
So much for the “hate” part of this relationship with les montagnes. Yet we feel reborn in the mountains, knowing that if one continues to run after sunset, even mere mortals will be rewarded with sunrise.
And mere mortals gather in adversity—when misfortune strikes, or when companionship is needed to lighten the burden. We rely on this deeply. Our survival as communities, and as a species, depends on it; naturally, this little niche sport has adopted the same truth. And so it goes. Unless, of course, one is at extremely high altitude and has paid one hundred thousand units to climb a famous Himalayan rock—but that is another conversation entirely.
Thus, it is not a lonely sport, and appearances deceive. Meaningful relationships are forged through shared extremes, as true in mountain running as in any worthy bond. You truly meet extraordinary people in the midst of the fire.
And then, suddenly, it is all over. A dream passes by. Pinch your arm—again. You cross the finish line exhausted, far past the point where emotions overflow. They have been carved out, tested, amplified over the past one hundred and fifty hours. Resources eventually run out, and the mind must surrender to the body. In that moment, it is nearly impossible to articulate what just happened. Hence this attempt, written retrospectively from the comfort of an old wooden desk and a leather chair.
From an analytical viewpoint, the behaviour that follows is strikingly predictable. And no, I am not referring to the obvious calorie deficit or the outrageous eating patterns. I mean the spectacle of a runner with a broken spirit crawling over the finish line, proclaiming they will never return to this forsaken place. Yet, inevitably, a few days later they sign up for a nearly identical event—without any astonishment.
Out of all people in this world, Emil, you know like no other that beauty belongs to the beholder of the eye.
You posthumously changed our running-drunk visions forever.
Today, we live a little
Copyright © Daniel Podzimek
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