Dušan Mravlje
Race preparation: 30 kilometres a day  
How is an athlete getting prepared for a race in the melting-pot of the Death Valley? Not anyhow different to any other ultramarathon, Dušan Mravlje explains extremly relaxed, based on his experience from over 120 ultramarathons.

“90 percent of it is simply a mental thing.” He had been used to the extreme heat in the Californian desert since he had won the Trans-America-Race in 1995. Back then he had been running a few hundred miles through the hot waste land in the Western US. The 47-year old from the region of Gorenjzka in the Slowenian Alpes has been among the elite of the 
long-distance runners for a long time. More or less
he is running without a break. 25 to 30 practice-kilometres per day – ran in about two 
hours – are the basis for his success.

And when he gets back home to his little house in
Trzic at 9 am every morning he does some cycling
for one hour. “To train some other muscles”, he explains. Who ever thinks now that the 6 ft 1 in athlet with his 146 lb must live ascetic is wrong. Dušan likes eating. Without a good steak or his beloved
cevapcici a meal isn’t complete. And he likes drinking, too. Now and then he puzzles his friends with the amounts of Slowenian red wine and beer he drinks without perceptible effects on his constitution.

“I’m just not an athlete by rote and I want to enjoy
my life”, is Dušans plausible answer. Maybe that’s
why he is – besides his successes – so popular in 
his home country.