Vitosha 100, 06.2019

So… last Saturday, for the first time in my life I participated in a competition. It was a mountain biking cross country competition – Vitosha 100 tour – a tour around the Vitosha mountain with length around 98 kilometers and roughly 2000 meters climb.

I can’t say I was in perfect shape, I was mostly hoping for my stubbornness and will to carry me through the competition. And the motto “slow and steady wins the race”. Well, as it turned out – not that slow (spoiler alert – I didn’t win the race). 

A dear friend of mine was nice enough, to invite me to sleep over at his place, so I don’t need to travel from Plovdiv to Sofia the morning before the start, but even with this – I barely slept more than three hours. Yeah, surprise surprise – I was excited. So I brought my fat lazy ass to the starting place at around 5:30 and by the time I took my number – I had to go in the “lazy ass bracket”, or the part ot the competitors that were expected to finish the race in 8 hours. As my friend suggested – at the start I tried to climb as fast as I could, as it was expected to go into a traffic jam later. Maybe I failed to mention, but there were more than two thousand people registered for the event. So I did my best, but after the initial climb, there was a boring dirt road, as the first descent. Amidst the hardcore XC competitors, I felt like a downhill racer, flying through the people with my AM bike. Well… on the next climb we did hit a traffic jam. We were barely able to ride, as there were people that went off the bike on each minor obstacle, which caused traffic shockwaves.

And I went on and on, a checkpoint after checkpoint, with my dull turtle tempo continued on, not giving too much effort, and not having too long breaks. Found some folks from the village my parents live in and aided them, as the typical road bikers – they were carrying close to nothing and one of them had torn the tire of his bike. It was funny several kilometers – I gained distance on the descents, they went past me on the climbs as if I wasn’t moving. Lost them before Zheleznica, at the place I lost my remaining battery. 

Well, from there on I went into cruise control. On the climbs I was mostly pushing my bike, on the flat sections – I was barely moving, and on the descents – I was just a passenger. The last twenty kilometers were the hardest for me, even though they were the easiest part of the competition. Maybe if I was in a better condition…

In the end – I finished 816th, for roughly 8 hours and 20 minutes. From 1400 participants. Not bad, not good. Still – My aim was mostly to participate, to have fun and to finish. Did all. Hopefully – will go next year as well.

This are some random pictures I took during the competition. As it could be expected – didn’t pay too much attention to take many pictures of the event.