"Let's go one step further": Why do students go on an ultramarathon to Brussels?

When the students started at the end of January the first march from Belgrade to Novi Sad, perhaps they could not have guessed that they would sow seeds that would later have many shoots.

Pelzer spread quickly, and he also got the reels, so in addition to pedestrians, cyclists and runners also started to visit places in Serbia - each in their own discipline.

Truth be told, some of them ran and rode bikes to Novi Sad then, and soon it was on the troad from Kragujevac to Belgrade several students from Kragujevac set out to invite their colleagues from the capital to the protest that was held in that city on February 15.

Since they are visiting the length and breadth of Serbia, the students decided to move on, and to convey to the Europeans, who for months remained silent about the events in Serbia, what is happening in their country and to address the institutions Of the European Union.

So, at the beginning of April, the cyclists headed towards Strasbourg, and at the day they arrived to the city where the European Commission is headquartered, their fellow runners announced that they would soon be moving on.

"We ran to Kragujevac, Niš and Belgrade, and somehow the idea came to us to run to Brussels, if necessary," Luka, one of the runners who will start the long journey on April 25, told Vreme.

They decided to take a longer route than the cyclists because, as he says, they saw that the cyclists did not arrive at the time of the European Commission session, so they now decided to arrive in Brussels at the time of the European Parliament session and to hand over the letters to the parliamentarians.

A journey of two thousand kilometers

On Friday, April 25, in front of sixteen, mostly female students and student runners there will be 1.993 kilometers. In the relay, they will cross them in 16 days, with one day off.

They are leaving from Novi Sad, and their final destination is Brussels, the European Parliament in the capital of Belgium, where they will take letters on behalf of the students of Serbia.

"The cyclists were in Strasbourg, they took the letters there, we want to go one step further and take the letters to Brussels, to show that those 500-600 kilometers will not be a problem for us and that if necessary we will even run there, that there are no obstacles that can prevent us from getting anywhere", says the interlocutor of "Vremen".

Their route is slightly different from the route taken by cyclists before them. While the cyclists passed through Hungary and Slovakia, further through Austria and Germany, the runners will pass through Croatia on their way to Austria.

It will pass through Osijek, Virovitica, Varaždin, Graz, Oberpulendorf, Vienna, Zeitenstein, Salzburg, Munich, Ulm, Stuttgart to Strasbourg. There he will take a one-day break and visit the institutions, and then the next day he will go through Metz, Luxembourg and Liège to Brussels.

They have 16 days of running ahead of them, during which they will mostly cover more than 100 kilometers a day. Some days he will run less. Their shortest route will be from Metz to Luxembourg when they will cover 60 kilometers, while on all other days they will cover at least 30 kilometers more.

 

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Relay race

Students will run this distance in relays - divided into several groups, so that no one will cross the entire planned distance during one day.

"Everybody will run at least 15 kilometers a day. When someone hears 15 kilometers, they can say that it's okay, that they can do it without any problems, but when it's repeated day after day, they start to catch inflammation and then it's really risky, so we'll look to correct it as much as possible, so that we can all endure it. You need to endure running for 16 days at 15 kilometers," says Luka.

As he adds, a lot of people have already contacted them who want to run with them, to support them on a certain section.

"We are of the opinion that it can, but it is important for us that they do not spoil our logistics and our idea. At any moment there will be at least one of our people on the track that we have selected to go with us on the trip. We will see how many people will run at the same moment, depending on how we feel", says the interviewee of "Vremena".

The idea, as he explains, is for there to be sixteen students on the route every day, but in case someone is injured, there will be replacements, in order to really comply with the plan that 16 of them run for the same number of victims of the falling canopy of the railway station in Novi Sad.

These experienced runners have created a plan according to which when they have a less strenuous distance one day, they will run a longer distance the next and vice versa.

Selection

In order to be sure that they are ready for what awaits them and that those who can carry out such an endeavor will really run, they made a selection.

"We looked at previous running experience, we didn't want them to be people who had just started running or who had never had such a way of training that they ran every day or covered a small distance," explains the "Vremena" interlocutor.

One of the criteria was the question: "Did you run the half marathon in Belgrade that was held recently?".

"If someone ran the Belgrade Marathon or half-marathon, they certainly had to pass the preparation period, to be physically ready for that effort. We automatically know for that person that they are in training, that they are active, because a marathon cannot be prepared in a month, so that was one of the criteria."

In addition, in a detailed form, those who wanted to run had to state how much time they spent on the track in the previous three or six months.

The idea is that no one starts unprepared.

Before them is a great undertaking in which they want to show their own endurance for the common good.