Vitosha 100 km, 2012 (short)

It will be a few more days until I get around to writing a proper race report, so here are the highlights and a few pictures (I am not sure whom I should credit for these – please let me know):

• Record turnout (200+ for the foot race and 600+ mountainbikers), the best course marking I have seen (heck, even I had no trouble anywhere!), and very well stocked checkpoints. Overall, a world-class race – mark June 21-22, 2013 on your calendar and come to find out for yourself!

There were often only about ten of us at the start line
in the early 2000s, and I thought this wonderful
event was going extinct. Boy, was I wrong!

• The field is getting increasingly competitive – five people ran under the previous course record (including at least two, who had never run this distance before), and 26, including two women, broke 12 hours. I am not sure when this trend of massive improvement will plateau, but my gut feeling is that we are nowhere near that point.

 Top three women: Maria Nikolova (left, 11:28),
Hristina Kozareva (middle, 10:18!!!),

and Malina Vatskicheva (right, 12:28).

 Hristina’s time would have been good enough to win the race
outright between 2000 and 2009! She finished looking really
strong, so I am sure she will be much faster next year.

Top three men: Dimitar Davidov (left, 9:02 - 32 min. improvement!),
yours truly (middle, 8:44), and Plamen Tsukev (right, 9:22 – 100 km debut!).
This does not even include the two runners who pushed the pace
early on: Iliya Kutsarov (9:23 – another 100 km debut!) and 

Bojko Zlatanov (11:50 after taking a nasty fall). I am guessing that, with
better headlamps, we will see at least one of these two on the ‘podium’ 

next year, and probably in the middle.

• I finally broke nine hours, and even won the race, but it was far from smooth sailing. More details on that soon (the traffic stats for this blog have convinced me to write my race report in both English and Bulgarian – thanks for the attention!).