30th of March – 1st of April – Prague, pre-race

The flight to Prague went almost without a hitch. “Almost”, as the first leg of the flight was app. 20 minutes delayed which meant I didn’t have much time to visit the lounge in Brussels – the horror! One hour after touching down on the runway in Prague at 1600 I was checking in at the hotel so all in all the trip ended up being a smooth experience.

Not a very inspiring view, but at least there won't be any traffic noise.

I realized that my 4 meals throughout the day (lounges and flights) had been completely filled up so in spite of nearing dinner time I decided to skip it and just, after a short break in the hotel room, have a walk around, figuring out where the start and finish lines would be and just taking in the nightly views. The planned short walk ended up being 3 hours and resulted in a handful of photos of a dark and wet Prague.

With the run being on Saturday I would be spending Thursday and Friday on relaxing and doing as little as possible. Having been here back in 2018 I had already visited the castle and the impressive cathedral there. I was tempted to return but with the grey overcast weather I doubted that the stained glass could live up to expectations so I decided to skip it. After picking up my race number and t-shirt at the runner’s expo I decided instead to head north across the river, ultimately ending up at the zoo. 

Tiger of the variant "cuddly".

I ended up wandering the zoo for 3-4 hours until closing and felt I hadn’t had enough time – even if I skipped the entire savannah section. The zoo was spread out over quite a large area which also meant they had room for quite a lot of species. They also had quite the selection of cats; two different fishing cats, leopard cats, Malayan and Sumatran tigers, lions, leopards and a clouded leopard. Especially the latter I was excited to see, but both times I passed by it was sleeping in its box with only the head visible. Apparently they also had cheetahs but the area where they belonged were closed so it’s anyone’s guess where they were being kept. They also had juguarundi cats (from Central and South America), some I had never seen before. There were a lot of aviaries, and in general it seemed like the animals had plenty of space considering it was a zoo – though the aviaries did seem slightly small-ish, especially for the birds of prey. In spite of the weather it was quite the enjoyable experience, and probably due to a combination of the weather and being outside the normal tourist season, according to the counter just inside the entrance less than 1050 people had visited throughout the day. For reference; the zoo is app. 55ha and has near 6000 animals (5 times the size and almost double that of Copenhagen’s zoo, respectively). 

Juguarundi.

At closing I left and walked the 5-6km back to the city center to have dinner and a walk around before returning to the hotel for the night. Apparently the AC at the hotel is set to winter mode which means it can only heat and not cool. For someone who normally sleeps with an open window all year round this is a bit of a disappointment, but not really something I can do anything about. Oh, well, things could have been worse. 

I think the map missed the point of its existence. 

Friday ended up being an intentionally relative short day as I wanted to rest before the run tomorrow. I did a bit of directionless wandering which ultimately ended me up west of the river and at the Petrin lookout tower. While the weather could have been nicer, walking to the top still gave a nice view of the castle which was near by and the city in general. Returning to the hotel I rested (again) for a few hours before going out for dinner and coming back for the rest of the night.

View of the citadel.

View of the city,

The weather hasn’t been quite as I had been looking forward to. I was happy when leaving home as we had had a few weeks with very nice weather and it was finally starting to feel like spring, and this week would have the weather souring again dropping temps back down to near freezing and no more clear skies. So flying out I felt that the timing was perfect – unfortunately it seemed like Prague has gotten the exact same idea. These days it has been breezy, 5°C at most and the occasional drizzle. Friday evening it was 2°C and feeling like -3°C, and tomorrow at the start of the race at 1000 we are facing 0°C feeling like -6°C, with a bit of precipitation mixed in. Yay.

New and old.

For someone who has never visited the hotel before the floor layout is so weird. The floors consist of a big square and two arcs lining one side of the square. There were two hallways going to the two outer sides of the arcs, and then one hallway going down the center to both arcs’ inner sides. And that middle section only had a door to the square hallway in one end. It was so confusing in the beginning but it definitely helped when seeing a floor plan. And I didn’t have to worry about street noise despite only being on third floor as my view is pretty much roofs and walls. And as my door is at the end of the hallway there aren’t much heard from other guests either, which is pretty nice.