Quo Vadis Centurion?

Where are you going Centurion?

The answer to that has an easy version... Slovenia. A country of mountains, rivers and a little bit of Roman History...

and a hard version...

To go do some CraZy little ultramarathon which starts at night, heads over mountains and covers 68 miles of heavily undulating (read steep up and down) terrain.

It didn't start well... at 2200 on Wednesday night... throwing up at the roadside on the way to Sam's house (Fleming not Deane). A combination of a long day teaching in a very hot room and the subsequent dehydration. had left me with a headache and unable to keep down food. Not the best way to start a trip where I would end up tired, dehydrated and probably throwing up from exhaustion.

Still a small amount of sleep saw me waking up at 0300 feeling better and as we triple. checked passports and kit with bleary eyes it was hard not to let the excitement bubble. up to the surface even if it was somewhat muted by the early time.

An easy trip to the airport followed, thanks again to Sam's husband Paul who we keep dragging out at godawful hours to take us somewhere. Heathrow was quiet and security was passed through swiftly and without hassle... so far so good.

A short stop in my favourite country, Switzerland, further weighting of my bag with a few swift souveniers, followed by another short hop up and down, over the Alps... what a beautiful sight from the air that is!

We landed to bright sunshine and mountains covered with snow in the near distance and an airport that was near deserted. Ljubjana!

or nearly Ljubjana anyway as the airport was surrounded by fields with tractors already buzzing around. The next part of the journey involved 2 buses... one from the airport to Ljubjana, the other from Ljubjana to Ajdovščina, where the race started and finished. It was the bit I was most concerned about but actually we made our way to the bus stop, sat there basking in the sun and the bus turned up! Our attention had turned more to the snow capped mountains. surrounding us... had we brought enough kit, they looked high and cold... nerves started to kick in a little... was the kit we had, good enough for the challenge we faced? Were we good enough for the challenge we faced?

The bus dropped us in Ljubjana where some quick. work on our part in finding helpful people, got us on a bus only 8 minutes after stepping off one. Easy!

The hour and a bit bus trip passed easily enough though, Sam dozing away... me staring at the surrounding hills and mountains, lost in thought.

Ajdovščina turned out to be a really nice little town... surrounded by small mountains or big foothills... take your pick. A sweet little church, a nice river, quiet and not many people in sight. We lugged our kit up the hill to the youth hostel where we found a nice room with bunk beds and no other people for the time being.

It had been a long day of travel and I could barely keep my eyes open over the pizza.... we crawled into our beds or rather I climbed up and ungainly flopped into mine. I immersed myself into my book... a story of mountains higher than the ones we would face tomorrow but hopefully ours would have a better outcome.

Sleep came quickly and I woke before my alarm... dozing... enjoying a bit of a lie in without my kitten alarm clocks to lick me awake.

The first order of the day was to pack our halfway bag and go and register but as we were doing so we quickly realised that we also needed to submit our bags to a kit check so we hurriedly stuffed all mandatory gear into our rucksacks before traipsing down to the sports centre. It was a beautiful morning. The sun was already beating down and we quickly became too warm, stripping down to t shirts. We are going to bake in the race during the day if the weather stays like this!

However, we reminded ourselves of how chilly the evening got last night and how much higher up we would be and then I started to worry whether I had enough layers... It seems quite likely that we are going to freeze and then boil, freeze and boil throughout the entirety of the race.

There was a peace to this place and we wandered into a largely empty registration hall past the finish line we hope to cross.

We received our race numbers, me a nice round 150, Sam 148 and then proceeded along the line, collecting a goodie bag with T shirt and headband and then pulled all our kit out of our bag to have everything mandatory ticked off. Sorted!

Of course we mooched by the merchandise stall and I managed to swop my pink t shirt for a blue one and then my card fell onto the card reader to buy another race shirt... Sam's card fell out just as easily and landed on the card reader almost by accident, purchasing some arm warmers and a race shirt. We ran out of there in case the cards fell out again and so our legs did not realise what is about to happen to them.

The rest of the morning was taken up with coffee and lunch and lazing by the river, packing our race bags properly and generally chilling.

Just after we finished packing our race bags, into our room were shown 2 gentlemen who are doing the same race... a short interrogation followed of us by them, trying to discern what experience we had... I was left with a slightly pissed off feeling as having said 'you aren't complete amateurs then' after hearing about the race last year, followed it up with 'are those your race shoes?'

I was wearing my comfy slip on barefoot trainers...

err no...

Clearly they had taken one look at us and decided we weren't cut out for this...

We walked out, to read our books by the river and once past the door, I turned and stuck my middle finger up in their general direction...

it made me feel better.😜

So that brings us to the present.

I'm sitting on the grass by the river, listening to the bird song and enjoying the warmth of the sun writing this.

Sam is lying flat on the grass, eyes shut.

It's a beautiful place and a beautiful day and tonight we will toe the start line, pray to the running gods and set off slow and steady with the aim to do our very best.

I will try to post a few live vlogs along the way and a few photos with a full race report in the days after.

Follow along either on the official race site

https://ultratrail.si/utvv-live/

or on SPOT https://maps.findmespot.com/s/J9BX

See you on the other side

Go With the CraZy!