Day 1 (Tuesday, 14 May 2024)

The Accursed Race is to begin at 9:00 AM. I wake up early. My plan is to get a big but safe (cooked, carby) breakfast, repack the bike while waiting for a bowel movement, shower, finalize kit, and roll easily to the start.

I fumble at every step, and it’s a giant rush. I end up dithering endlessly, like Buridan’s ass, walking around in circles and retracing my steps and changing my mind and so on and on. But I eat a few croissants, drink some espresso. I find some cats at the playground.

By the time I leave the hotel, it’s raining. I start riding 25 minutes later than I want, at 8:55 AM–I’m staying more than a mile from the start line, and there’s normal Tuesday morning traffic. Then I’m pushing hard; I’m seeing numbers like 500 W on the computer. I roll up to the starting line with my heart at 160 bpm. Good thing I didn’t put on the rain gear–I’m sweating. I just make the rollout.

It’s neutralized in the city, but we aren’t to ride with each other. We’re one ragged group. Traffic laws in Shkodër, particularly for cyclists, seem already to be observed on something like a voluntary basis, and we’re not questioning the right of way the group seems to get. Some curious onlookers. But it is raining, so not a lot of ceremony once we’re a block out.

I am certain the presence of the group is making me push too hard, and the computer confirms it. Luckily I did a terrible job packing my saddle bag. I need to stop to firm it up. I’m now the last rider on the road—in ten days’ time I will finish… second-to-last. At the moment it’s an opportunity to ride my own pace, i.e. slow. It feels stupid, but I’m already trying to baby the hands, back, and butt.

The ride out of Shkodër is magnificent. We follow a winding river valley into the high mountains. It’s beautiful and rugged, and after just a few km it feels like we’re well out of the city.

The day ahead is big. Like probably many of the riders, I’ve been incepted a little by the organizers’ segmentation of the route, and I’m aiming at finding a hotel in Podgorica for the night. From the start that makes about 185 km and a tick over 4000 m of uphill, broken into pretty much just three big climbs and matching descents. I think this sounds like a good idea because (1) I’ll be “ahead of schedule” in the sense that I will have more than 1/10 the total, at least in mileage, and (2) I expect I can get a good hotel in Podgorica—it’s a city, right?

Initially it’s black tarmac under green trees. I see some other riders. Many have stopped to adjust kit that’s been rattled loose by the first bumps. Others are peeing. It stops raining. We’re going up the valley.

The pavement ends after about 20 km, near a cluster of houses. It’s flattish there, with attendant big muddy puddles. Then we keep climbing. It’s–ominously–not easy. The top of the first climb comes at about 47 km on the head unit. We start descending right away. It is not smooth, hardly the packed, dry couscous of the gravel roads back home in Zurich. This is chunkier and looser; the substrate is irregular.

Someone flies past me on the descent. Two switchbacks later I see them in a ditch, in inverted aspect. They’re ok, but presumably a little fizzy. Better them than me–I’m not tough enough for that kind of thing. I continue to squeeze the brakes and pick the smoothest lines I can.

At the bottom of the first descent we cross the Shala. It’s huge, rushing and beautiful. I take some pictures as we go across the bridge. Almost immediately, it’s time to climb again, mellow at first–we follow some new road construction along the banks of the river.

Low, wet, productive clouds hang in green clefts, rocky crags above and below them. I buy some coca cola at a fancy new inn, with a freshly paved parking lot, that seems out of season–but when is the season?

Then it’s a paved climb up into Theth the park. Smooth, new, black tarmac, still waiting for the hillside to heal following its incision in the mountain. Some sections have already been blasted away by falling boulders; more frequently we pass evidence of slides, washouts, small falls. It is spectacular, vertiginous, gray, green. I pass places advertising adventures like ziplining and four-wheeling.

I’m pedaling way too hard. I feel good, and I’m not listening to prudence. I see a few people, catch a few people, am passed by a person. Over the top it’s all still paved and we blow into the darkening evening skies still rolling smoothly. The dropping darkness is also meteorological. Coming down into the valley there’s rain in the distance.

At some point we start climbing again. I’m stupidly focused on beating the light’s fading. As it begins to get truly dark, the rain begins to fall. At the end of the pavement there’s a hotel and I see a rider or two in the driveway, weighing their options.

I keep going and, as if my body is suggesting it should have some say in the matter, cramp. If you’ve ridden with me or just been nearby after a race or something, you might know that I am susceptible to a terrible cramp that fastens on somewhere on the inside side of my knee and pulls all the way up to my groin. This time, like most times, it’s my right leg. It’s minutes of blinding pain–I’m telling myself that it doesn’t actually mean anything, it’ll go away in a few minutes, you can’t actually die from this, etc. But I’m nauseated nearly to the point of incontinence. I briefly consider whether the threat of another will dangle over me for the rest of the evening or… race?

Once I can do anything, I’m back on the bike and rolling up the no-longer-paved climb. It begins to rain more seriously. The road turns into a path through grassy pastures, passing along the edges of fences, cutting across open fields. Visibility is very bad or worse. When it’s not pouring rain, dense, cold fog settles on the hillside. The lights I need to see through the dark scatter off the thick cloud. All I see is black or white.

I take a wrong turn and have to hike the bike back. I’m off the bike more than on at this point because even if I can ride some of the stuff, I can’t see more than 10 feet. This rain ends up destroying two of my lights–luckily redundant with others.

At around 10 PM I start going downhill. I’m still more on foot than tire–even once the path turns to a dirt road there’s loose, smooth, wet, big stones. And I still can’t see.

I come out of a field and arrive on a highway. It feels like the middle of the night, and it’s raining. But I can see now–away from the grass and trees there’s more wind and no fog. I’m wearing my upper-half rain gear. Everything’s wet.

It’s highway down to the border and a little beyond, all fast and easy, and then it’s an overgrown track along the side of the river. I get surprised by a couple of deeper sandy sections, but mostly it’s just frustratingly slow. (This early on, I’m still getting frustrated at these kinds of hangups, but to be a pro is to let them go.)

The final run-in to Podgorica is not too remarkable. Gridded urban development fades in at the edges. I’m a little less excited about the spray I’m getting off the wheels. I’m still pushing too hard. I pull up at a convenience store off a traffic circle outside the main downtown and buy some fruit juice and ice cream (if I remember right). I bump into two other riders, one whom I’ve been seeing all day, and one whom I haven’t seen since the pre-race meeting. It’s friendly. I’m cold and wet and tired.

I get into town and for want of options go into the (much too fancy) hotel on the main drag. From my earlier research I knew there was a 24-hour front desk, but I hadn’t gone so far as even to call them during the day, so uncertain was I of my arrival. They have a room. I am much too slow with all the logistics–I stopped the computer at 1:15 AM or so, but I am in bed after 2:30 AM.

Day 2 (Wednesday)

I suck at this. I’m spending way too much time off the bike. I forget when exactly I woke up, but I remember telling myself it was about 4 hours’ sleep. I’m so slow. I eat some food, get everything organized. I’m out the door at the laughably late time of 9:15 AM.

I hit a grocery store a couple blocks off route, and then ride the bike path out of town, rolling into the suburbs and farms, all the while looking for a place to pee. It’s a humid morning, fairly warm. I’m thinking about the people who slept outside last night, and I’m grateful that I had somewhere with a mattress.

It’s going to be a long day. I didn’t have too good an idea of what I wanted to do in the beginning. I figured at some point it would be a plan to make it as far as Buna, in Bosnia and Herzegovina–I had an eye on a hotel with a 24 hr front desk. Even in the morning I realized this was optimistic.

Podgorica is in a valley. We are to cross it and then get up on a rolling plateau. Then we’ll drop down into Bosnia and Herzegovina, where we will follow a defunct railway, now a bike path-cum-tourist development idea. At around Buna, where I plan to finish the day (but–spoiler–won’t), the route climbs up into the mountains again.

My spirits are pretty high once I’ve drained my bladder. I can tell it’s warm, but I don’t have any real complaints on the bike. Legs are still there. I can’t really notice the upper edge of zone 2. But it’s not nothing to get up to the plateau. It’s irregular, at times quite steep, going up something like 850 m on 13 km. But it’s pretty smooth, and I can relax and just pedal. I catch up with some familiar faces who slept and awakened earlier than I did, but who are pacing themselves more intelligently.

On the plateau it’s not fast. The path rolls up and down, sometimes smooth, sometimes chunky gravel, sometimes champagne. A little bit of a lot. A lot is paved. For the most part it doesn’t seem to bop from village to village, but instead from pasture to pasture. The topography is complicated, and we twist through hollows and nooks in between wide open sections of scrubby, rocky shrub- and grassland.

I stop in at an unlikely looking building that advertises coffee. A group of about six men of middle age and older are talking at a table. High spirits. One of them offers hearty welcome and I pay him for a couple of sodas. I have a small and very pleasant chat with two Britons, a man and his mother, who are on a gravel tour that overlaps somewhat with ours. High spirits.

There’s a long overgrown sector that forces me off the bike and into frequent tick checks. No ticks detected.

I am stopped on a narrow road by sheep, some dogs, and, thankfully, their shepherd. I throw out my best dobar dan to no reception.

Towards evening I’m spat onto the highway, where I stop at a gas station. One of the organizers/media people, waiting for their car to be gassed up by a colleague, asks how I’m finding the route. I embarrassingly but enthusiastically call the last gravel sector all-time. I eat some ice cream, drink some soda, and get back on the highway.

It’s a big road to the border. These borders are all twofers, with an exit and an entrance control. I make sure my passport is zipped into my bag before continuing the descent into Bosnia.

The road down is spectacular. It’s a rippable, wide and twisting highway down to a long reservoir between steep slopes. The sun is almost sunk to the horizon, the water is dark and peaceful. There’s not much car traffic. It’s hard to think it’s just… Wednesday.

After we leave the highway, it’s a beautiful run across and along the reservoir.

I’m holding out hope for a pizza in Trebinje, a small city about 25 km, mostly downhill, from the border. Upon closer inspection of the map, though, I see that we’re not really going through the main part of town. I stop early at a convenience store to stock up on some snacks.

At this point in the race, I didn’t really have these stops dialed. It’s a slow stop, as I waffled for ages about my options for food in town. Indecision or impatience wins out and I leave with less than I should.

It’s an overcast evening, with a long twilight, the sun illuminating the gray sky lengthwise. I’m feeling a little sorry for myself because I’m so far behind schedule.

The ride through town is down a handsome tree-lined boulevard with lots of cafes and restaurants. Seems lively, but nowhere looks like a good bet for a takeaway pizza, aka all I want. I leave disappointed. And it’s basically dark now.

We take some turns onto paths running along the edges of fields, the beginnings of the Ciro trail, one of the marquee sectors of the race. This is the defunct railbed I mentioned earlier, built in the latter days of the Austro-Hungarian empire–think 1880s.

It’s dark and I’m hiking the bike through thorny plants. Honestly not my favorite sort of thing. I am frequently uncertain of my route and switch between my phone and head unit to make sure. In the dark it’s easy to remember that Bosnia is the land mine capital of the world. I am not ready to bushwhack in the darkness. This is also a sector through which the dynamo light was not that helpful.

Once I’m rolling again, I’m riding along long, straight, narrow pavement with trees on either side. Every few kilometers there’s a house or something. Once in a while I encounter a car, and it’s spooky.

The trail proper is smooth, flat, and boring as hell in the dark. I am mesmerized by the spot on the pavement. I get chased by a dog–a shot of adrenaline. Night dogs are the worst. Then it’s back to trying to stay awake.

At some point I give up. I can’t keep my eyes open. But finding a bivy isn’t that straightforward–the abandoned villages we pass are not clear of mines. I snap at a lighted area with picnic benches that looks inviting, actually the entrance to the largest cave in Bosnia.

Baby’s first bivy

The entrance to the cave seemed a great place for a bivy. It was well-lit, so not scary, and paradoxically offered shelter nearly invisible from the road: I could sleep in the shadows. I set up on a stone bench, thought about the possibility of bats–I’m a normal person who doesn’t want to get rabies–and wriggled my way into the bivy bag. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that I bounced on my butt into the bivy bag. It was not elegant or particularly quick.

In my home testing of my sleep setup, I had used a book to prop up my head. I did not bring any books on the bike. So I had the idea to put all my valuables–passport, wallet, phone–into my race vest, and by using the race vest as a pillow, I could solve two problems at once.

Back to the bouncing on my butt: I bounced onto my hydration pack, which burst, introducing about 1.5 L of cold water into my bivy bag. Of course I didn’t notice at first. Once I was cocooned in the sleeping bag, I noticed my feet were cold… and wet! That’s what that sound was! I thought about my options for about thirty seconds. The best option seemed to stay as dry as possible and feel sorry for myself. I bunched my sleeping bag on top of my pad and fell asleep, waves lapping at my keel.