Włóczykij is somehow special to us. I (Ania) have been wanting to do it for ages but always something came across my plans. Radek did it already twice (2016 and 2017) and this year it was high time for me to have a go too. I have to say, the fate didn't spare me as the conditions this year were... fierce.
This is our group on the starting point. I don't know if you can tell that from this photo but I was already freezing at that moment and the worse was yet to come. The week before the event was the coldest week in the year, the temperatures going as low as -20 dg. C at night. Do I need to say that Włóczykij takes place at night? :) Anyway, the day of the event was slightly better and only because of that I decided to go. The temperature at night was -13 dg. C. I'm a chilly person, I'm always cold so you can imagine what such temperatures mean to me. Of course, I layered myself that day. But somehow, I put all layers and was already cold on the start. That didn't give good predictions for the night.
My photo collection from the event is very scarce. I was literally freezing. Our snot would freeze, our sweat would freeze, our water would freeze. Booze didn't freeze fortunately :) It's an orienteering trip so the idea is to find the hidden points. We found them all :) 50 km (for us it was 54 because we didn't optimize the route at times) of a walk. We started in a group but somewhere near the end Radek and I parted and continued in a faster pace. I had remorse because of that, I was feeling like we should stick in the group but I was trembling all the time, I was feeling a physical pain from the cold and needed to find a way to elevate my body temperature. And so we detached from our friends and moved on in a very very fast march. It helped.
I was pretty surprised because to be honest, physically the whole trip was not that exhausting to me. But the cold was unbearable and I felt it long after the finish. But I'm sure I'll repeat this the next year. I suppose the odds of having the same weather the next year are low. Let's hope :)
That's us on the finish! Our official result was:
Place: 50/144
Time: 11h 09 min
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