When Martin Hatala started his first half marathon in October 2011 as a 37-year-old without adequate training and equipment, he finished it in Košice in 1:58:59. He had no experience with running before and it was an instructive lesson for him.
“It was my very first race in my life, and I actually completed it on a whim. I had no training, I only ran a few kilometers a week without a watch. I put on long pants, a long-sleeved t-shirt and regular sneakers. Before the start, a gentleman asked me if I wanted to die. I tell him that it is cold in Košice in October at nine in the morning. At that time, I had no idea that after a few minutes the body would warm up. It was a massacre. Gradually, I started to give it up and I ran to the finish line in boxers,” he recalls.
Now on the first Sunday of October, twelve years later, he finished in Košice with a time of 2:45:13. But already as a marathon runner, that is, on a course that is twice as long. Next year in May, he will celebrate his fiftieth birthday, and his story confirms that persistent people mature at an older age.
He is trained by a cycling legend
Until he was forty, he did not enjoy active sports very much. In addition to the manual work of a mechanic, he only started running in a more organized way in 2014. He chose this type of sport, like many others, because of its availability. “You simply put on a T-shirt, shorts, sneakers and go. When you’re done, it’s the same, you undress, you take off, two minutes and you’re done,” he explains.
He comes from the Černová district of Ružomberok, which is why the My People Černová club is listed in the results list. He lives in Liptovská Sielnica and trains in its surroundings. He runs there almost exclusively on an asphalt road, most often in the direction of the mountain pass Huty, which connects Liptov with Orava.
In the months without racing, he runs
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