Just as an aside, before I get on and post a report of our epic Serbian mountain bike trek last week, a few words about the Fruska Gora MTB Marathon. It is organised annually by the Fanatic Mountain Biking Club and is one of the major events of the season. There are three races - the small (32km), the medium (56km) and the big (80km) marathon. You can have a look at a map of the marathon here.

This year’s marathon on the 6th May coincided with our return from our cross-Serbia mountain biking trip last week, but I was determined to get my bike together overnight (it was a complete mess) and enter the race. Now I am no racer, for a whole host of reasons, but I entered the small marathon last year for fun, and realised I could at least actually complete the course! I even didn’t come last (I was 44th out of 85, or something like that!) This year I thought, after all that training and actual riding up and down the mountains of Serbia, surely it’s now or never to try the BIG marathon, all 80km. Come on, we were doing 80km some days on our trip, piece of cake. Hey, I might even give some of those fancy riders with their fancy bikes and fancy shaved legs a run for their money! Right?

Wrong! Below is a plot in Google Earth of the route, as recorded by my borrowed Garmin Vista Cx GPS, which I have to give back to Infoteam in the next few days (with some regret, I must say!). This new map is thanks to the groovy Google Earth plugin which I can finally use, now that higher resolution satellite images of the Novi Sad area are available:

Fanatic MTB Marathon route

Now here’s the thing that makes this race just a little bit different from riding up and down the mountains of southern Serbia - Fruska gora is small, 538m at its highest point. I haven’t worked it out yet, but on our Serbia tour we must have climbed umpteen Fruska gora’s. However, Fruska gora is very steep. It is criss-crossed by paths and tracks which are used primarily by hikers and, on a few main routes, by occasional forestry tractors - there has never been any wheeled traffic to speak of, which would necessitate more winding but less steep tracks.

Perhaps I can illustrate this by showing you the height/time profile, also recorded on the Vista (you can see the height/distance profile on the Fanatic site above), where you can see my laborious progress up and down the slopes of Fruska gora:

In short, I have to say that anyone who can ride up and down these kinds of gradients is obviously insane! Perhaps fatigue and stiffness from our long trek played some part, but there was just no way, after a 30 or so km, that I could ride out most of those uphill gradients, some of which you almost need to get on all fours to WALK up, never mind ride! Couple that with the fact that you have to have a touch of madness to hurl yourself and your bike DOWN many of those tracks (I will never have the technique, or frankly the bottle to do that) and perhaps it is not surprising that I came in at a respectable (I thought), 6hrs 56 minutes, almost THREE HOURS after the winner! I wasn’t quite last though - following me was one guy almost twenty years older, another older guy who got a slashed tyre and had to wait almost an hour for backup and STILL caught up with Marko Boskovic, who suggested that he “hadn’t really trained that much”, or some such!

So although it was just for fun, it was also a lesson in humility - there are guys out there who are living and breathing this stuff, and a few days riding around some mountains on my part doesn’t come remotely close to the kind of training they are putting in. I am glad I took part, and finished though, and I think next year, maybe, just maybe, if I shave my legs, I think I can put in a better show…

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Posted on May 8th, 2007 by markowe
Filed under: About me, MTB Serbia (All)