Buena Suerte, Esteban!

BTG would like to wish reader, friend, and fellow traveler Steve Young all the best for his departure on an odyssey of epic proportions. Today he is off and running on a nine-day trail running adventure on the pilgrimage routes of Spain. He will carry nothing but a small backpack, a steady pace, and his thoughts. If there's any higher being or spiritual revelation to be found in that territory, he promises to let us know.

Steve is the author or A Run-in with the Law, a blog about pursuing sport, studies, and the passions of life. He is also an avid trail runner, and at the end of August will be running the Leadville 100 ultramarathon in the Colorado Rocky Mountains.

Blaze on, Steve! We look forward to hearing about your adventures! 

Running through (and past) memory

Zagreb, Croatia - Ugresic's hometown, 15 years after civil war engulfed it

In the city the fitness center is my healing temple, the price of soothing cheap.
~ Dubravka Ugresic

At Blaze, we spend a lot of time talking about running. Usually we discuss how awesome it is. There are so many benefits to the practice - cardiovascular fitness, mental clarity, a cheap means of transport. But with this powerful line, Dubravka Ugresic (pronounced OOO-gre-zhich) reminds us that running, and sport, is also a means of healing.

Ugresic is a writer from the former Yugoslavia. I write "former Yugoslavia" and not Croatia because many of her musings - both fiction and non - address what it means to be a citizen of a country that no longer exists. During the 1990s not only was her homeland wiped off the map, but it was annihilated in a gulf of civil war and self destruction. The Balkan War left thousands homeless, orphaned, and without nationality. As Ugresic's writings remind us, one cannot understand the importance of these kinds of things until we lose them. And make no mistake - we cannot understand what it is like to be forcibly stripped from them, and to live life without them, until it happens to us.

When that happens, what do we do?

Ugresic's line about the fitness center comes at the end of her novel "The Museum of Unconditional Surrender", and it does not refer to one of those great inspiring, or even soothing, workouts. The image she gives us is instead of a line of ladies plodding away on the treadmill. One-two-one-two go their steps, she writes. One-two-one-two the beat of their hearts, pounding with their plodding lives.

But sometimes, the best way to work through an emotional trauma is to start by working it out of one's system. Walking away from such a horrific past, and walking towards a new life, is always an arduous process, is one which we cannot even begin to understand (nor claim we do). But in a step, in a breath, in a heartbeat is affirmation. Is life. If we can still move our legs, if we can still move our arms, then there is always a chance that we can still move our minds and still move our hearts. We can still move on.

Today Ugresic's Zagreb is a bustling metropolis full of cafes, shops, and life. As are many of the Balkan cities she writes about. In less than two weeks, you will be able to read all about the best places to run in these places. Zagreb, Dubrovnik, Sarajevo, Belgrade. Where once there was loss there has been regained life. And when you run, you celebrate that.

Blaze on, Gemma Heyes!

Blaze Travel Guides wants to wish our favorite Kiwi active traveler safe travels as she heads off to South America on another adventure! Auckland native Gemma Heyes is off and running and will spend the upcoming months cruising through countries in the Western Hemisphere, and should turn up States-side early in the New Year. Kia Kaha, Gemz! Blaze on.

Better 1 or 2?

The maps are almost made, the photos just about edited, the chapters stacking up. We're in the final countdown to launching Blaze Travel Guides this August. With publication, however, comes responsibility. We are of course responsible to our runners to provide the most accurate, most comprehensible, most informative and most reliable content we can. Yet we are also responsible to the people and places we are writing about. In our own way, we are telling their story. In ten pages or so, we have to communicate words and images that allow people to begin to grasp what this faraway place is all about. Every single bit of content matters in this challenge, and every one must be thought through.

Recently a photographer friend has been helping me with an inner debate about some photographs for the Sarajevo chapter, which are posted above. While the shots are of the same spot in the city, the feel of each one, and the lives each one portrays are different. One is a solid shot of an important setting in a beautiful history (right), the other is a sort of more chaotic snapshot of a summer afternoon street scene (left). Artistically, the first is a better photo, but the second is more true to what Sarajevo today, fifteen years after the war, is really all about.
And while every guidebook will have a shot of the Sebilj and Old Bascarija (even after writes and rewrites of that chapter, I still can't spell that word), not every guidebook will make an effort to communicate the fact that Sarajevo, today's Sarajevo, wants more than anything to move past its tragic recent past and in to a space where people can lead normal lives. A space where people can sit in a cafe without worrying about shrapnel, take their kids outside without worrying about having to duck and cover as a family behind a bombed-out tram car, a place where friends and lovers can slowly stroll the old streets, in the sun.

And even, dare we say it, a place where people can go for a good run.

Like this guy is doing.

As a company, Blaze Travel Guides is legally responsible to our clients - our readers, our sponsors, our advertisers - to provide accurate information and decent exposure.

As runners, writers, travelers, and human beings, we are responsible for more. We are responsible to the people, places, and experiences we happen upon, people whose stories don't always get told. As two young women determined to run the world, we are guaranteed to stumble upon some fascinating stories. It is our responsibility to, with every word we write, map we create, and photo we produce, to share them.

From there, we have to figure out whether they should go on page 3 :o).

July in Europe: Races, Fun Runs, and Charity Events

For those who decided to make a marathon their 2010 New Year's resolution, July is the time to do it. Culminate your six diligent months of training with a memorable race, and if you're looking for just the right one our suggestions below might help:

• SWITZERLAND: The Swiss Alpine Davos Trail Marathon is the ultimate mountain running experience for runners of all abilities. Choose to cruise courses like the 11.3 km jaunt around Davos lake or the 78.5 km ultra trail with over 2260m elevation change. The gun goes off on Sunday, July 31, so you've got plenty of time to get over there.

• FINLAND: Head for Suomi's ancient capital, Turku, for the Paavo Nurmi Marathon on July 3. This race will be particularly pleasurable for the afternoon runner - the marathon and half-marathon races don't start until 13.20. Marathon, half-marathon, 10K.
  

• ITALY: Take part in this new take on the evening passagiata - the Reschenseelauf is a 15.3 km run around an alpine lake between Italy and Switzerland. The run doesn't kick off till 17.00, which means you'll be done just in time for a happy hour beer or glass of wine, depending on which side of the border you end up on. Both, by the way, are performance-enhancing beverages. Kind of like Gatorade.