Biegnij Warszawo Nocą z Legią - Run Warsaw at night with Legia

To celebrate Legia's 100th year in existence they organised a night run along with the "Run Warsaw" people. To be honest, I am not a huge fan of Legia for reasons I won't bother going into here, but the run went past our place, so I thought heck why not watch. At first we had the fun of watching the Police and Straż Miejska really badly organise traffic, it even got dangerous when a taxi driver became, or should I say proved, he is a complete arse and nearly ran over the Straż guy directing traffic and then driving away down the street he was told not to. I wish I had taken a photo of his car to have his numberplate. Hindsight. Anyway, then along came the runners, it was a balmy evening, so many people were feeling the last km where we stood.

Here come the first runners

striding and sweaty

First woman, but I was still working out my camera settings. Damn.

Getting good light balances now.

Then I decided to switch to B&W

Loving the pain.

Legia shirts old and new

Like wolves, in packs

The hair has lift off

Legia signs a plenty 

Got to love some leopard print

Just checking in with the security detail.

Loving the phone glow to light up his number

When a car surprises everyone by putting on their lights

cheeky grin

Shock!

This man is an advertising campaign

Happy birthday indeed.

Running makes me smile too.

It is hot work out there.

A pop of colour.... or two

clapping the supporters

zen like.

looks like meditation.

Kiss and run, instead of the ZTM kiss and ride campaign

a new perspective

getting creative

like an abstract painting

run my little blur run.

check out the mobile phones going past.

Marathon Mazury

Well, what should you do in the middle of June in Poland? How about the Mazury Marathon? After doing my first marathon a month and a half ago I was keen for more action, and what better than a trail marathon I thought.... well it was easily the hardest thing I have ever done. I fell over two and a half times, I ate a lot of bananas and vegan cola gummi snakes, and drank until I could drink no more. It took 3hours and 46 minutes to cover the 42.2 kms and it was painful. As I write this now I can feel the throbbing from my toes whose nails won't be there for much longer. But the feeling of finishing was the greatest thing in the world.

Before the race, people had too much time and energy on their hands.

My Warsaw International Triathlon Club team members, all finished and all did me proud

This is Ryszard, he started running in 1997 and did his first marathon, he has now run 200 of them! I take my hat off to him.

An amazing man, people who say "I can't run a marathon" really just don't want to at the end of the day. Which is fine.

Many proud athletes finished.

Head down to the finish is sometimes the best option

Or maybe getting some family support is a good thing too!

Some will do a dance in the last few miles

Just getting to the end is worth a thumbs up.

Local fire truck, the straż were amazing and clapped every finisher!

Support is really important to a runner, if you ever go past a marathon, even just on a day out in town, stop off and give a cheer to a few people, it really means the world to a runner. Even run alongside them and support them. It is an amazing feeling.

Many locals will watch you run past and support you too.

After all of that you get a medal, it isn't gold and it really doesn't matter.

You also get to reward yourself eating guilt free, as you have burned somewhere between 3000-5000calories. Depending on your speed and size. From the size of this I burned a lot!

Mazury is known as the lake district of Poland. It is the capital's playground sitting between 2 and 3 hours from Warsaw. It is a very popular place for people to have summer houses and for school trips and the like. It is beautiful, sparsely populated and you are never far from a lake. In Polish it is called the Kraina Tysiąca Jezior and in German as Land der Tausend Seen, meaning "land of a thousand lakes", this kind of gives it away a little.

As Mazury is the lake district you must visit a lake or two.

After the run, rest your feet.

It is so quiet and still, barely a sound other than wildlife.

Then it is time to cruise home.