Ten years of Inferno Run, the wild races between a thousand obstacles. Advice to deal with them – Corriere.it

Strength, speed, agility, endurance and determination are the qualities to unleash to complete a obstacle race like those signed Inferno Run. Five qualities like that in the same athlete? What better multidisciplinary prerequisite for what will become the fifth round of the modern pentathlon, replacing horse riding? Ten years have passed since the debut of the competitions of the circuit created by SSD Andromeda and, if the Italian movement of obstacle runners is the one of today, the credit also goes to the diabolical Series, which opens the 2023 season on Sunday 12 March on the snow of Alpe Cimbra. With an intriguing four-leg calendar ahead, we asked for some training advice from Mari Vona, athlete of Team Inferno and coach of Fiocr, the Asd «Italian Ocr Federation».

Hellish dates

From Lake Cocito where, according to the 32nd canto of Dante’s Inferno, «sinners stay cool», to Malga Millegrobbe it takes a moment. The first appointment of the season is for Sunday 12 March with Inferno Snow, on Alpe Cimbra, in the cross-country ski resort of the locality in the province of Trento: an exhilarating winter edition between walls to climb over, stretches of white coat in which to crawl, weights to carry and multirigs to cross in suspension between ropes, pegs and rings, all made more suggestive (and terrifying) by the names of the obstacles – Charon, Cerberus and Lucifer in the first place – invariably of Dantesque memory. But the Series, which this year consists of four adrenaline-pumping stages with registration open on the website www.infernorun.it, continues with equally hellish scenarios: the next round, Inferno Park, will take place on Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 May at the hu Altomincio Village , in the Mincio Park, between the provinces of Verona and Mantua. Inferno Alp follows, on 16 July in the Prato Nevoso Ski Area, on the Maritime Alps. Finally, on Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 October, the grand finale with the muddy Inferno Mud, at the hu Norcenni Girasole Village in Figline Valdarno, in the province of Florence. On any occasion, it will be possible to run over short distances (3 km with 12 obstacles) and long distances (10 km with 25 obstacles), choosing between the non-competitive and competitive categories, the latter qualifying for the Italian, European and World Championships.

Damn intriguing

Through a calendar of free training sessions in preparation for each competition, which will take place simultaneously in the Inferno Training Camps, the Fiocr coaches will prepare the participants in the equipped indoor and outdoor areas of Turin, Novara, Florence, Bologna, Tarquinia (Viterbo) and Lonato del Garda (Brescia). The next sessions will take place on Saturday 29 April, 24 June and 23 September. In the meantime, we asked Mari Vona, Team Inferno athlete and Fiocr coach, who works at the Inferno Training Camp in Florence, how to take advantage of these targeted sessions for individual obstacles, but also how to start with exercises in the gym or in city parks to enhance some skills at the base of this sport, in which numerous physical abilities and mental strength are brought into play by overcoming natural and artificial obstacles scattered along routes of different distances, height differences and types of terrain: an apparently inaccessible activity but, in reality, a discipline open to all and complete from a psychomotor point of view. Mari Vona’s first piece of advice is for running: «With a good pair of shoes and the right clothing, the occasional run can be transformed into a healthy habit up to improving with dedicated programs. To date, obstacle courses are characterized by mixed tracks (on average, from super sprints of less than 100 m to 15 km of a standard one), from snow to mud, and variable gradients, from the sea to the mountains. For this reason the preparation must be as diversified as possible. Based on the length of the route or the average duration time, correlated to the height difference and the number of obstacles, the traditional slow distance, the repetitions and the fartlek should be used, with which to increase resistance and prepare for cardio-circulatory adaptations. Preparatory technical works are mountain descents, skips and gaits, to be carried out also in the gym, or repetitions of steps on stairways or large steps».

Ruthless obstacles

Closely related to running, transport obstacles are frequent in the OCR, for which Mari Vona suggests to refine strength and endurance through the use of sandbags or kettlebells: «The typical exercise at the base of this skill is called farmer’s carry, suitable for everyone: you walk holding the tools in your hand with outstretched arms. The next step will be to work on the ballasted race with transports, inserting them in the repetitions, both uphill and downhill, without exaggerating with the volumes to avoid injuries». Entering the various groups of obstacles, we find those in suspension, in which the aim is to overcome them in length by remaining hanging from holds, of various shapes and sizes, without ever resting your feet on the ground, until the bell is touched. A capacity that for Mari Vona must be taken care of is, therefore, «that of remain suspended on bars conditioning the gripi.e. the grip of the hands. You can start with simple exercises, such as the ever-present dead hang, hanging from a bar keeping your core and buttocks in balance to work as much as possible on stability and strength. The tempo can vary from a minimum of 10” to more than 45”. This strengthening will be functional to work on the swing, so that the body moves in a straight line from one grip to another, optimizing the effort of the upper limbs. Further useful exercises are pull-ups with various grips (prone, supine, neutral, with different objects) and core strengthening, such as hollow position and plank on the elbows».