Before I tell you all about how the race was, let me first explain how a Brazilian vegan runner ended up running inside a salted mine in Poland, with the awesome people of the Vege Runners.In my country, we also have a vegan team, which contemplates a lot of modalities but most of us are runners ( Equipe Multiesportiva Força Vegana!).

A good friend of mine posted in our Facebook group the first video that you released (without subtitles) and I was simply amazed by the whole idea of that race. At that time I was still living in Brazil. A couple of months after I received the confirmation to come to The Netherlands to do my exchange program, and started thinking about the odds to be in that race.

After I arrived in The Netherlands I thought about sending an email to Pajak, just to see if it would be possible to join the team. I must say that it was a completely shot in the dark because I wasn´t expecting anything in return, since the previous teams were really good and had earned great places in the race. Tomek asked for my PR´s and I sent them to him. Some weeks later I got the answer and I was in the team. Just like that!

The funny thing about that is that sometimes in life you just have to go for it, do what you want regardless what you may think of before doing it.

I must say that the whole welcoming was really amazing: they gave us a place to sleep, they shared a pasta dinner with us and were really gracious at any matter. Once again, thank you guys for the overwhelming hospitality!

About the race. It was tough, I´ll have to say that! Even though I was very well prepared for the race (I did a lot of specific training, lots of splits and intervals), the real thing can turn out differently from what you would expect.     If I could define this race in a sentence, I would have to name it “A race with many beginnings”, and here´s why. Every loop that you finish you´ll have to wait for the other teammate to run his lap. That could take from 10 to 11 minutes in average and, depending on your fitness-level that could be too much time without moving! For me at least, it was because after two and a half minutes, I was already cooled-off completely. Of course, I am not used to very cold weather, but that wasn´t the case because I had my special warm running clothes on.

I did run a lot of marathons before, and even so there´re some things that I could not yet control myself very well. I started the race in a very low pace (to be precise, 3:25min/km for the first three laps). Of course I paid the price later and it was at the third big loop. The first one was these 3 laps, the second was 6 laps and the third one again six laps, in which I have completed only 5.

In the end I completed 17 laps in approximately 3h53min. It was better than I expected really, because it was my first time at a “rotation-race” within 12h. And at the end we have ended up in 12^th place overall, not bad compared to our original goal that was being in the top 20.

This whole experience was great, specially having the opportunity to meet some amazing people that share the same ideas that I do. We live in different continents, belong to different countries, speak different languages, experienced different weathers and live in different time zones, but in the end we are all the same, and specially in this case because we are all vegan athletes and we all want a better world for us and everyone else in the future. Sometimes it can be very difficult to even grasp that idea, but it is very real to its core. And I am already waiting for your visit in Brazil, I hope you could make it someday.

Thank you for everything once again. Cheers.

-Fabio

Foto: Vera