bonk (Day 3, Thursday)

My alarm went off after about two hours, around 2:30 AM. Another slow faff to get everything going–I see strava stopped for about 3:50, so it was almost as much time sleeping as fiddling around with the kit.

I know condensation is a common problem in single-walled shelters. As I discovered last time, you can make this a negligible problem–its effect after the decimal–if you first add “pre-condensed” water. Fully drying the sleep system was impossible, of course, but I gave everything a spin around the head before stuffing each thing into its home on the bicycle. As I scoured my spot, so as to be doubly sure I hadn’t spilled something in the dark, I found a bunch of bugs I’m glad I hadn’t seen before bedtime.

Back on the bike path, I’m missing any pep my step had earlier. I crawl along. A small climb onto the main road peels me off the bike path for a few minutes. The route returns to the river’s edge. It rains, it clears. After what seems like very little time, the sun comes up, making me feel even further behind. But it’s a beautiful blue-gray morning sky, quiet and lonely.

The path turns to gravel, and it’s easy to imagine a railway. Maybe it’s only the power of suggestion–the path is two gray gravel ruts bending slowly into the mountain. One’s always more overgrown than the other, and I know from last night that thorny plants grow here. So, soft as I am, it’s slow going, passing from side to side through the looser median.

It’s not climbing so much as staying high while the valley falls away below. We reach the promised bat-filled tunnels. They’re dark and wet, mammal smells stinking. My front wheel splashes up bat shit. On the floor are piles of earthy stones, brown in my headlight, fallen from the ceiling. Emerging from a tunnel and coming round a bend, I can see the wide open plain below, to which I eventually descend.

At river level we find bridges and towns. It is just late enough that neighborhood groceries are beginning to open. I stock up on some colorful drinks, a brand I had started drinking yesterday, called something like “Juicy Fruits.” (Ominous note.)

My plan is to make it to Buna and negotiate to sleep a couple of hours in a hotel. It’s a beautiful, hot morning, and I am not enjoying it. I’m later and later. I endure an all-time bonk. I piece it together that the fruits are not so juicy after all! They are sugar-free, and I am now something like 4 hours of nutrition behind schedule. Devastating. But I have nothing with me and just need to tough it out till Buna.

When I get to the hotel I’d written, I know it’s not going to work. It’s way too fancy. I’m turned away. The old woman at the desk explains it’s a new hotel and the boss won’t like my bicycle in the room. The way she talks about the boss makes me feel sorry for her. I hang my hat on one Motel Kolo, a place I’d found very early on in my research for night 2, but rejected for its being a little way off course. It’s amazing. It is emphatically not too fancy. The guy at the desk / waiter at the restaurant shows me to a room, a freestanding wooden square, thinly carpeted. I shower, hang up the wet stuff, close all the wooden shutters, and check the time. It’s after 10 AM. I sleep, harder than the dead, for like four hours.

dog days

This is a low point. I’m coming out of this morning’s bonk, I’m dehydrated, underfed, and slow to get moving. While I was asleep, I was added, ominously, to a group chat called something like TAR Race Comms. Now, while dressing, I receive its first announcement: A rider has had a race-ending dog bite on the track ahead. On the map, the provided coordinates fall on a sparsely populated dirt road. We’re advised we can reroute to avoid the stretch if we want. It adds some distance, but I opt to ride on the highway around this—which turns out to be a good decision.

Quitting my room, I am struck by how nice an afternoon it is. It’s hot, still, quiet. The river is rushing past the motel and its restaurant. The board is advertising fish. We’re between lunch and dinner, but there are some people taking it easy under the trees and umbrellas. I drag myself away.

The legs feel very bad. I pedal (some fraction)-heartedly into Blagaj, which has been on my radar since a colleague mentioned it as a place to visit. I am expecting to get some food here—all I had managed at the motel was a few oranginas—and I stop at a bakery on the main road.

On the bike again, it’s time for the first climb since Montenegro, and I’m not ready. I crawl in the heat, my perception of time all mixed up from my daytime sleep, and by the time I reach the plateau at the top, beautiful, wide open, like a highland moor, it feels like evening, and I feel slow.

There’s a jeep parked in a clearing in the distance, with a folding table set up next to it. I for a second assume it’s a race photographer, but I hear gunshots and realize it’s a hunter. My only company up here.

I take the turn away from the dog bite corridor, and make it up to the highway. It’s nice for having like a 100 kph speed limit or whatever. I pass into a Cyrillic alphabet region. Tall coniferous trees line the sides of the road as it descends in twists to Nevesinje.

My plan is to get some food and make it as far into the evening as I can before bivying somewhere. I find, for the first time, what I’ve been looking for, for days now: a takeaway pizza counter. I struggle to communicate with the woman working, who covers my slices in mayonnaise and ketchup. Not that bad after all. I don’t know how much I eat but it’s a lot.

Once the pizza is gone, it’s cold and dark. The village is fairly lively with young people—it feels like it must be like high school prom or something, which it obviously isn’t. I am aware of the dark forest around. Innumerable dogs are barking in the distance. I’m less excited about my bivy plan. I check the map for any hotels nearby, even though it must be only about 25 miles since my last sleep.

I strike out on the phone. Nobody speaks English, but it seems like nobody has any beds. My last option is a few hundred meters away, so I hop on the bike to check it out in person. I leave the machine in the parking lot and walk in—the place is a low-ceilinged sports bar attached to a glassed-in lobby/patio that serves as a kind of front lounge. I go to the bar to ask the man if there are any rooms, and if I can take my bicycle with me. Neither he nor his colleague speak English and I resort to using a translation app. He indicates for me to wait–he’s got to bring some beers out. I follow him out around back, where external stairs lead me over a dirt parking lot to some number of rooms.

I have to leave the bike outside on the landing. I’m not too happy about it—across from the parking lot is the beginning of the highway out of town, a gas station, what looks like some kind of mini truck depot—but I don’t have a choice. And it turns out my bike isn’t alone. The poor racer who had been bitten by the dog is staying here. I hear her discussing what sounds like a very complicated bus itinerary with the man taking me to the room. It would be very painful to have to scratch from the race here, in the middle of nowhere, I realize. I pay cash up front, lock my bike as well as I can, and have a good sleep in the best $20 hotel room I’ve ever had.

let’s go back some time (Day 4, Friday)

I wake up late, and I’m slow again. But I feel a lot better after a short day with a lot of sleep. It’s about 6 AM. I stop at a gas station on the way out of town, am accosted by a group of guys who seem to have been drinking from the night before—I’m an object of amusement given my silly outfit, rumpled aspect, and the time of day. It’s easy, but slow to decline their laughing, shouted offers to drink some beers with them. I leave with a bunch of soda and salted peanuts.

My way back to the original route—I’m still on the dog-avoidance detour—is not amazing. I pass through some muddy, overgrown tracks. I go through a sleeping village where I startle at a very scary dog, tied up right next to the blind, twisting path between the houses.

I’m pretty freaked out after that, and more after getting chased by some stray dogs on the highway, so I position my dog repellent at the top of my stem bag. I feel confident with it close at hand. A few miles later, it bounces out as I pass by a scary, barking dog at 50 kph. I feel bad to litter, and I really wanted the bottle back, but I’m not brave enough to retrieve it.

But today will be an amazing day. First up as a nice, winding climb, first through farms, then up a rocky, green ravine to a grand, rolling highland. Clouds blow past the distant mountains. I roll fast on the gravel.

Then we take a damp, tree-lined descent into the settlement of Ulog, the largest we will see for miles, and the end of gpx #3. From there it is a long, something like 50 km climb, mostly under trees, up the side of the highest valley of the Neretva. It’s spectacular, quiet, mountainous country, green and alive. Fountains, springs, and memorials dot the way; signs indicate necropoleis.

Near the top of the valley, we sneak through a pass, the route doubles back, and we travel up the next valley along the edge of the Sutjeska national park. Not along the river, these mountains look rockier and more alpine. It’s full afternoon; I ride up through green meadows below steep, gravelly walls and rocky peaks. I pass some small farms. It feels like the Dolomites, except I’m alone.

The descent is beautiful, starting in the more alpine character, passing through trees coniferous and deciduous, along rivers, traversing above valleys.

At the bottom it’s farmland–I pass some kind of hippy camping place that I had marked as a maybe but it’s much too early. I see a fellow rider, we chat for a minute, and then ride within sight of each other down the highway past a closed restaurant that I think we both had set our hearts on, and end up meeting again at a bakery a little farther down the road.

For about $10 I order every type of burek, meat, cheese, potato, in what would normally be staggering quantity. There’s a small market next door, and I get some soda to chase it.

Freshly fortified, riding the high of a perfect day of riding, the plan is to push to Plužine, the first real town past the border in Montenegro. I figure if I can manage that, then I can make Berane, the first control point, tomorrow, which I know from prior estimation puts me in the running for finishing inside the time limit without anything extraordinary necessary. This lifts the mood, too.

It’s fast riding down the highway through the gorges down to where we will turn up the valley of the Tara.

Up the valley it’s rolling, tending uphill, beautiful among the mountains and above the river. Behind every turn is a campsite advertising rafting and restaurants. The sun is going down, and it’s twilight as I make the border.

After the border, just about where the Piva meets the Tara, it’s full highway, up through the tunnels, crazy high above the Piva gorge. The road is cut into the rock. It feels awesome, as I make out the sheer black shapes of the mountainside against the blue dimness of the night. Magical riding, and no way would I have been there without the occasion of the race.

When I make it to Plužine, just above the lake, I’m still relaxed. I have a room at Guesthouse Zvono. They were super nice and the room was great, out in the garden on the hillside. The restaurant was closed, but they made me two enormous sandwiches, one for today and one for tomorrow, that saved my day.

A day I would do again and again.