Total ride: 150km in three and a half days, total ascent: approx. 3550 m

Just come back from a great little camping and mountain-biking trip to the Valjevo mountains. We’ve been to this area a fair few times before, but there is plenty still left unexplored, and the area we opted for, around the “mountain” (1244 m) of Medvednik, so-called (medved means ‘bear’) because from some angles the west end looks like a bear’s snout and the other end its rump. No bears there though, that we know of. See the gallery from this trip here. Also, below you should see a Google Earth window where you can see all four days riding, with the terrain covered in fairly high resolution.

You can open the file in Google Earth here, too.

I won’t go into great detail - it’s another one of those trips where you just had to be there. Fantastic nature, great camping experience and lots and lots of unexplored mountain tracks to follow.

Highlights:

- picking wild strawberries, blueberries and sremuš - a plant that has a very strong garlic taste and is also known as Ramsons, or, funnily enough, ‘bear garlic’! Also, loads of raspberries - this is a major growing region, and we made sure we didn’t miss that.

- more of a lowlight: Darko falling on Day One. Not a major fall (they rarely are), but a slip on gravel and no gloves on, so he ended up with a couple of nasty cuts on his hands. That’s a reminder of why cyclists should wear gloves - it’s not just for fashion value.

- riding in the pouring rain on Day Two, with lots of mud to boot. You get used to it after a while and it didn’t bother us at all! Even Zoran, who tried to keep his bike clean the first day soon got into the spirit of it!

- lots of great climbing, 3500 m of it, which was good for training! And there’s nothing like getting to the top of a peak like Jablanik or Ranjenica and seeing the world at your feet!

- lots of downhill runs too, not many of them very extreme, just right for practicing safe descending. I think the skill I got to work on most was reinforcing the habit of keeping an eye NOT on the road beneath my wheels, but the next 5-10 metres ahead, which gets you simply flying over everything and in a much safer way.

Too much to mention here, check out the rest of the pictures and next time, come with us mountain-biking in Serbia!

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So this year I have ridden in 5-6 XC races or marathons here in Serbia, not all of which I have written up in the blog unfortunately. Serbia has a modest MTB XC League with 8 races on the calendar this year. The XC racing community is pretty small, with probably 5 riders of real note (no offence, the rest of you!) riding in the Elite category, with even fewer racing much abroad. Currently (2009), Bojan “Djuka” Djurdjić is easily the top rider, proving practically unbeatable in the Serbian XC league, where he has won all the races but one (where I think he had technical problems), putting a spanner in the works for Boris Popović, last year’s champion, by turning up for all the League races, while still managing to race in a few UCI events abroad (including a first place in Turkey). Most of the races this year have boiled down to Boris chasing Đuka for most of the race, leaving the rest of the field to pick up what’s left. Đuka is 77th in the UCI rankings at time of writing, which is pretty good going considering the very limited resources the Serbian Cycling Federation has to send riders abroad, especially in MTB.

Categories

Races are usually open to Elite, Elite Women - of whom there are sadly few, most of the races being won by 19-year-old Vanessa Durman, who needs to get some competition soon! - Masters (whoever feels old enough), U-23, Juniors and Cadettes. Then there are unlicensed races, usually held before the main event, for Hobby Fun (usually one lap) and Hobby Sport (usually 3 and sometimes featuring quite good riders who didn’t license that year for whatever reason).

There is also a whole series of races called the MTB Open - an idea that has been coming along nicely this year, to organise a series of amateur races (all in the Vojvodina region so far) that would avoid League dates and be open to all comers. A nice idea, with 3 races now held in 2009. Though organisation has been a little shaky, it’s been good fun and I am somewhere like 10th on the board, with mostly pretty decent riders ahead of me (though I am one of a few who has not missed a race, so that helps!). I have not taken out a licence this year, having only really got into the racing side this year, and not too sure about committing to a club, especially with a baby on the way in November! So I have also ridden Hobby Sport in one race in Kula (6th place), on which performance I can conclude I could give Masters a try next year and at least be sure of not finishing each race last! Depends a lot on how much winter training I get done, too (between nappie changes!)

Come and race in Serbia!

That’s a little look at Serbian XC MTB. It’s a pretty small community, everybody knows everybody, so most races are good-humored affairs, with fair-play usually at a high level. That’s not to say though that the races themselves are not taken very seriously. Serbian riders probably need a lot more experience riding abroad before they start making an impact though. I don’t think there is anything to stop UCI-licenced riders from abroad coming to Serbia to ride, either. There are no UCI points to be had, but it would be great to see some foreign riders come along, enjoy some great XC courses in Serbia, some of them as good as any you will ride abroad, and give Djuka, Boris and the other top guys something to fight for!

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I was really keyed up to ride this, having gone round the (pretty demanding) track a few times (local advantage) and mastered most of the obstacles - some very steep descents, off-camber corners, whole series of downhill steps and tough ascents. It looked like being fun. But then the unthinkable happened - the weather forecasters got it right, and to mark the first day of summer, constant rain began Saturday evening and did not stop until well after the race had finished. After turning up early and walking round some of the track I quickly concluded that unless I wanted to try to pick up a cheap medal (there was hardly anyone else riding in my category), there wasn’t any sense risking life, limb and bike in these conditions, especially not in the Hobby category (I don’t have a licence) - it was an absolute mud-fest.

So the next best thing was to experience the race vicariously and film some sections of it. So here it is for your viewing pleasure, not a complete account of the race, but enough to see what sort of conditions we are talking about.

On the video you can see the start of the race - the two top guys, “Djuka” (Bojan Djurdić), with Boris Popović hot on his heels, which is pretty much the story of the entire Serbian MTB XC League right now. They are haring off up the first climb, which follows an oft-ridden route up a bunch of hairpin bends to a famous monument to the Serbian poet Branko Radičević. A few tricky bits, including roots, steps and sharp bends to negotiate, and it’s quite a slog to begin the race with, never mind ride 6 times, but these guys are local and know this like the back of their hands.

With them are the U-23s, then after a one-minute delay, the Masters and Juniors appear too.

The next bit you see on the video (1:07) is the end of the second big descent, from the Stražilovo “Hiker’s Lodge” (Planinski dom - hard to find an adequate translation), where as you see, no-one was crazy enough to attempt the descent. It was tricky in the dry, never mind when slippery wet, with an off-camber drop at the bottom. I stayed filming here for a while, to see the various creative ways people used to get down! Nice overtaking by Brindza Akoš at 1:47, to take third position, and he was to feature in an amusing moment later on in the race.

The next major section (6:53) shows part of the course that is actually before the previous one, the descent from Branko’s Monument - a really sharp (maybe 45 degree) slope, followed by an off-camber narrow bit and then a steep descent curving left 45 degrees. A friend and I went to practice this section in the dry a few days before and just about got the hang of it - I never dreamed anyone would do it in these conditions, but they seemed to do fine! Must reexamine my mud-biking technique!

At 7:40, Djuka, the race leader comes into view, followed shortly by Boris in second. Then, a hilarious scene as third-placed Brindza Akoš, riding the race of his life, reaches his coach (Benda Csolt, a former elite rider himself) standing by the tree on the right. Benda launches into a tirade in Hungarian, which most of us couldn’t understand, but equated to something like “You’re only 20 seconds behind Djuka [not quite true!], hurry up, or I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you!” Rumour has it that at training sessions he chases him with a stick to make him ride faster! The training method seems to be helping anyway! Then he goes running off down the hill after him, shouting like a madman - no idea how he kept his balance! Brilliant stuff!

The last scene at 8:30 was a bit blurred by the rain, but shows race leader Djuka stopping, having suffered with something in his eye for some time (not sure what happened to his glasses, but probably opaque with mud). He tries to wash it out, figuring he can afford to lose some time. 50 seconds later, Boris comes steaming up and sportingly stops, seeing that Djuka has problems. The warm fuzzy moment doesn’t last long - Djuka is back on his bike followed by Boris, down a tricky (for me) semi-drop and though he still seemed to be suffering, Djuka went on to finish the race, with Boris second and Akoš a very respectable third.

Kind of sorry I couldn’t ride, but then again, I have a feeling it was probably the wise choice…

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Well, the event I had been looking forward to all year - the biggest MTB marathon in Serbia, the Fanatic Fruška gora marathon - is over for another year. I love this event, maybe because it is the first “race” I took part in, maybe because it is open to everyone, slightly flouting the Serbian cycling federation rules and allowing all-comers to take part, even over the longest distance of 80km, and making it a great fun event with over 200 riders taking part this year (a record).

It was the event I had worked up to all winter and spring, but until just a few days before I still had no idea whether I would ride the Small (30km), Medium (54km) or Great (81km) routes. My reasoning went: I know the Small route like the back of my hand, and looking at my time in practice I could actually finish top 10 easily, even top 5. The Medium was a bit of an unknown quantity - I had only ridden it once, very slowly, so wasn’t sure how well I could do. It didn’t seem too tough though, and I could possibly top-ten that one too. Finally though, I couldn’t resist it: this IS supposed to be a marathon after all!

So I went for a repeat of 2007, when I last attempted the 81km Great marathon, and when I finished in a time of 6:56, as compared to the winner Boris Popović (national champ) who was back in time for lunch, in 4:03 (yes, that’s almost 3 hours difference!)

The Great Marathon

This race is not to be taken lightly, and hopefully this map shows why:

80 km (50m) is a piece of cake to ride, but couple that with 2500m of climbing (for the Brits that’s Snowdon and Ben Nevis put together, approximately) and suddenly the distance is the least of your worries. The route takes you up and down Fruška Gora multiple times, so you are very conscious with every descent that an evil ascent awaits you! In particular, look at the final two or three climbs - just as you think you are getting close to the end, the worst ascents (and they are a nightmare) are yet to be ridden! So you DO need to be fit - and we are talking about real endurance fitness, and though I have trained a great deal this year (and even ridden the route once in practice with mixed results) it still wasn’t for the faint-hearted. The sole aim was to finish, and to possibly improve on my time, maybe even go sub-6:00.

Start

The weather this year was a vast improvement on last year when torrential rain turned the mountain into a mud-fest, everyone’s times were off by at least 25% and the winner (Boris again) came in with a trashed helmet and missing saddle, having crashed somewhere and apparently lain unconscious for some time before picking himself up and still finishing first, though with no recollection of what had happened.

It was dry in the forest, a hot sunny day, with a great crowd of riders keen to get going. I knew I was fast on the first 30km as I know this section well (practically with my eyes closed), and since we who were riding the Great route got to take pole position, I made sure I got a quick start so I wouldn’t get bogged down in the crowd on the first ascent. Not that a few minutes would make that much difference over the long distance - I’m not racing the guys who are riding 30 and 54km after all, but I figured every minute would count later on and it would be good to get the first 30km out of the way (been there, done it!) So I got away among the first 15 or so at a fairly high rate of energy consumption, just to get the early advantage, and then the plan was to back off.

Down then up

The first descent, mostly on wide-track forest floor, with some loose gravel too, flashed by (one rider slid out on the gravel - someone ALWAYS does at that spot. Local knowledge, can’t beat it…) and before I knew it, I was out at Paragovo, waving to Mum and Dad who’d come by to watch, and crossing the road (apparently closed VERY late by the police, literally after the leader had already come into view). Then began the first major ascent, a very steep, only just climbable section through the woods, though very familiar to me as I ride it at least once a week. My early fast start paid off, there were not too many riders ahead and I wasn’t forced to dismount.

Coming out onto Glavica I spy Dejan, probably the best hobby (i.e. non-club) rider, threading his chain through the rear derailleur. Not sure what that was about but I leave him behind and embark on the next climb, which has another very steep section, with a lot of loose wood and logs, which this time I just couldn’t ride. But no worries, there’ll be plenty more pushing ahead, no sense in killing myself here.

All the while I have Miki Grujičić in my sights, a 45-year-old guy, a local bike mechanic, who always rides the Great marathon and never ceases to impress with a VERY respectable time. If I can just keep up with him…

Then down

This ascent continues up into the woods for 20 minutes or so until we reach the first watering point, close to the ridge of the Fruška Gora, and then begins a rapid descent through some nicely bermed tracks, out into the open at Direk and then down a little technical section into some woods where you can put the pedal to the metal again all the way down to Stražilovo, a local picnic spot. Grujičić disappears from my sights, pulling away from me within seconds of the beginning of the descent, and I never see him again..!

Up again

At Stražilovo I spot Nemanja, who got there well ahead of me but apparently crashed trying to change his gloves on the descent (?!) and put himself out of the race. His club friends Ed and Damir (both also riding the great marathon) stop to see if he is OK. I leave them behind and begin the ascent up to Brankov Grob - a monument to Branko Radičević, a famous Serbian poet. The path up to this goes up some steep, rooty, winding hairpin bends, with the occasional steps, and riding this never ceases to draw the awe of pedestrians who are struggling to up walk there, and can’t quite believe anyone could cycle up!

Down again (getting the picture so far?!)

From the monument on there is a milder climb up to the main ridge road, the so-called Partizanski put, onto the tarmac and then, after signing off at the first checkpoint, back into the woods and down another fun descent (very fast if you know it) to the monastery of Grgeteg, whereupon begins, you guessed it, another ascent, possibly the hardest so far, especially for the less fit riders who are only going the 30km (or those who thought the 54km sounded like a good idea, but didn’t really know what awaited them!) - this tends to be the point where they start wondering why they did this! A particularly steep section forced a dismount (haven’t managed to ride it yet this year, though it is doable) and then it was back on the bike and more struggling until the climb levelled out slightly and took a more gradual gradient back up to the ridge road and the TV tower.

All this while there is not much movement in the positions - I more or less retain something around 20th place (including all the riders in the other races) and don’t overtake anybody much, nor does anyone overtake me, surprising since the guys riding the shorter distances should have been forcing a higher pace. I guess I got a good start, and I’m not TOO shabby, after all!

Then comes a fast tarmac section down to Iriški Venac, a major intersection, where I am surprised to see my parents again, who inform me that Boris came through some 20 minutes before me, haring down the hill like the madman he is. I sign off at the checkpoint, grab some food (not going to get caught out this time and bonk halfway through) and carry on along the tarmac, still very few other riders around, and part company from the Small marathon (they are nearly home and dry).

Down to Vrdnik

A turn off the tarmac after a few km, and a fast descent through the woods, though now this is less familiar territory to me. Through the spa town of Vrdnik on tarmac and back out, up along the road to the monastery of Jazak, where now the Medium and Great marathons also part company, at around the 35km mark.

This is where on previous occasions I have started to really struggle and others will testify that this is where the Great marathon really starts. Boris is now at least half an hour ahead of me (how does he DO that?!) but I am still around 8th or 9th in the field for the Great marathon, which is fine by me.

Up to Letenka

Up, up, through some heavily rutted tracks, I catch up with a young guy called Nikola who is taking a “rest” in a field by the track, at least so he says, and we ride together for a while, up to a spot called Pinkijev spomenik, a monument to a communist hero, though I confess I have failed to spot the actual monument whenever I have come this way. We cross the road and duck back into the forest onto a nice section of single-track, perhaps the most fun part of the whole route. I keep up with Nikola’s fancy youthful cornering until we reach a sharp technical descent. I have ridden this before without dismounting, but this time the curse of the brake pads seems to catch up with me and my discs appear to fade, forcing me into an emergency stop into a bush and a dismount.

At some point here I am also caught up with by Dejan, the guy who was reattaching his chain right at the start, and Damir and Ed - gotta face facts, I got off to a better start than they did, but these guys’ve just got a bit more in them when comes down to it, and all three were to finish some 15-20 minutes ahead of me in the end.

Nasty crash

Eventually reaching Letenka I stop for more food and drink at the checkpoint, manned by Ivan Davosir, the main man behind the Fanatic bike company, team and marathon event. I am surprised to be caught up by Gamzzy, one of the Elite riders, and all-round nice guy - I had no idea he had been behind me all the time. He complains of being a little ill through a lack of sleep, and he does look a bit dodgy. We set off on the next descent, me slightly ahead, when I come across a shocking sight - the young guy I had ridden with earlier, Nikola, on the ground, twisted up with his bike, scraped and cut up and bleeding all over the place. Somehow his brakes had locked up (hydraulics, dialled in way too tight as it turned out) and he had lost it on a perfectly innocent, almost flat section. I stop to help him out, together with Gamzzy and the another guy who were not far behind me, move him off the path, call Davosir who is just up the hill with his dirt bike to hand, as it happens, and then when we are sure help is coming and Nikola isn’t too badly hurt, just banged up (that was the end of the marathon for him), we head on down, me outstripping the beleaguered Gamzzy who would normally leave me cold on the descent. The “rest” had done me good, it seemed! Still, I could feel myself being just a little more careful after that accident - the sight of blood usually does that.

Guess what?

Down to a little plateau called Testera (checkpoint 6) where a little group formed of Ed, Damir, myself, Gamzzy and his companion (who I am sure had a name, but I didn’t know him!). That was more of us than last time I took part, when I was the first rider through there in a full 45 minutes and there was no-one else to be seen - in fact I did not see ANYONE else after the first 30km! We rested for a few minutes, before leaving in pretty much the order we had arrived, though Gamzzy had sat down by this point and was intimating that he might have to call it quits (which indeed he did in the end).

You have to realise that at this point you are 54km into the race, 25km to go, about 4 hours in, and yet you know that a) the race leaders are already close to home b) the WORST section is yet to come!

From Testera you embark on the single biggest ascent so far, almost 400m of climbing, much of it unrideable (well, by me at least) - hiking trails which were never meant to be ridden by bike. By this time every muscle is screaming out and getting off and pushing doesn’t make it any easier. This part is meant to be survived, nothing more!

Up to Crveni Čot and… back down again

Eventually (the intervening agony cannot really be adequately described), having lost all other riders from view long ago, I espy the mighty cables which anchor the Crveni Čot communications tower to the ground, hit the highest point on Fruška Gora (539m), sign off another checkpoint and head… back down again, this time including a very tricky technical descent which I have not yet mastered and which I am forced to walk. All the way down to the Beočin monastery (yes, there are a lot of monasteries on Fruška Gora!) and then, horror of horrors, ANOTHER ascent!

Up to Brankovac

This ascent is probably the second worst - if you have been doing anything like a normal pace until now, you probably have virtually NO strength left for this 300m (pushing 45 degrees in some places) ascent and it’s a case of pure survival. On previous occasions it has usually been at this point (if not on the previous ascent) that I have promised myself never EVER to do this again. Much of it is unrideable by all but the fittest (and some of it not even by them, I suspect), and my legs, arms, shoulders… hmmm… everything come to think of it, is agony by now. Amazingly though, perhaps due to the test run I did a couple of weeks ago, or maybe because I know the route better now and know that it DOES end eventually, I survive the climb with some remaining reserves of mental and physical energy.

Brankovac signals the beginning of several kilometres of tarmac up to Zmajevac, and on a little further, until a turn-off into the woods indicates the beginning of the last descent, a little deceptive in places, probably where Boris bashed his noggin last year, into the village of Stari Ledinci.

Home run

From Ledinci there is one last, sadistic climb, with much pushing (even when you are NOT on your 80th kilometre!) which doesn’t look much on the map but believe me I was close to grinding to a halt at several points and it was only sheer bloody-minded determination to finish the race that kept me going. Down some tricky steps to the little lake just below Popovica and then a grind up a hill that we had sledded down last winter (pictured right - seems like yesterday), out onto the Popovica car park and a sprint against no-one but myself to the finish line to end:

13th/24

with a time of

6:18!

Reflections

The Fruška Gora Veliki maraton is a serious undertaking. It is fiendishly demanding and it is not surprising that according to official Serbian XCM rules, and probably international ones too, entry should only be allowed to Elite category riders. The fact that the leader finished in 4:24 (20 minutes off his own record time), almost two hours before me, should tell you something! By the way, Grujičić finished 8th, in 5:30 - if only I had kept up with him!

It doesn’t tell the whole story though - there were riders who finished in more than 8 hours (8:53 in the case of two of them!) and there were good riders who did not finish at all. I managed to shave my time down from 3 hours behind the leader to two, so that’s kind of an achievement too!

I was perhaps surprised I did not make a slightly better time, as this was only (hmm, did I just say that?!) 40 minutes quicker than my first attempt, which itself was far from ideal - I was in much better form this time, much more confident on the descents, did much less resting, much less pushing, took in much more energy on the way and did not get a puncture as I did before. I would still definitely like to see a 5 on the timer next time, even if it’s only 5:59!

The fact is that Fruška Gora is not conquered easily - it takes exponential increases in fitness just to make small improvements. A faster descent here, a brisker climb there just aren’t enough! In fact it takes successive years of training to build up to something like this.

Next year I hope to be back, and at least shave a little more time off, but whatever happens I will look forward to this great event and I encourage anyone who thinks they know what MTB XC marathons are about to come along to Novi Sad next May and show us how it’s done. Because to be honest, I am still not entirely sure myself!

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The official Danube route was mapped out along the Serbian stretch of the Danube a couple of years ago, from the Hungarian border to at least as far as Belgrade, possibly further now, so Belgrade-Novi Sad is perfectly doable. You can just follow the signs from Belgrade (or buy the maps for that section) and you can catch the trail in Belgrade - probably on the way out towards Zemun, though don’t quote me on that. They are pretty recognisable blue signs.

However, you should bear in mind that in actual fact the trail does not go literally along the Danube all the way, in some places it is not practical, or simply not worth it, so the route is a compromise and sometimes goes on public roads. I personally dislike riding my bike on major roads in Serbia - drivers simply do not have an awareness of cyclists (or even of the basic rules of driving in a lot of cases), but I guess people do ride it all the time so it can’t be THAT dodgy and you still get to see some of the Danube that way. If you REALLY want to literally ride along the Danube, it is doable along most of the length (though along the north bank of the Danube - see below), but you should be aware it might be more of an “adventure”! Most of the Danube has an embankment running along it, and you can ride this most of the way, and it is very scenic actually (the pictures you see here were taken along that route). However, it is pretty rough in places, and in practice it would be better to skip some parts of it, especially where it peters out altogether and you get into marshland!

The official Danube route

The “official” Danube route crosses the Sava and I believe goes via Zemun and follows kind of what we call the “old road” to Novi Sad, actually a fairly major road, only leaving this for Belegeš, Surduk and Stari/Novi Slankamen (you should see these places on the map, or Google Earth) before rejoining the main road and crossing the Danube at Petrovaradin into Novi Sad. It also goes past Sremski Karlovci, a historic old town and one of the main reasons probably why the route went this way. Worth a stop if you go that way. This road, apart from the bit that clings to the Danube that I mentioned, is an alternative route between NS and BG and is used by a lot of cars wanting to avoid the motorway toll, with all the problems I mentioned. Also the road is in somewhat bumpy condition in places (especially around 10km after Inđija). There are also a couple of climbs - nothing major, but if you are carrying a lot of stuff you might feel them.

An unofficial Danube route

I will also describe the non-official option in case you want to try it - this is, like I said, a bit more of an adventure. I actually described this route before, but in reverse, so if you read this article you will get more of an idea, as well as a Google Earth file detailing things more precisely. This route involves following the signs for Pančevo, which will take you over the Danube straight away, but then NOT turning off for Pančevo, rather following signs for Zrenjanin, and going through Borča, past the turning for Padinska skela and heading for Titel. Now this route still involves a fair bit of major road, but it is in somewhat better condition and there are a fair few options for joining the Danube embankment. However, in practice I would still avoid doing this before the town of Titel because:

a) the trail is very bumpy and not always clear before this and

b) because you have to go through Titel anyway because that is the only place you can cross the Tisa.

Once you have crossed the Tisa you can head for the trail which runs along the Danube. There are topographical maps here (you can get all the other maps you need from this site too - remember though that they are very old and also that they are still technically classified military maps in Serbia! No, I don’t know what they are doing on that website!) and you can see that IMMEDIATELY, (I think right under) the Tisa bridge, you can turn off onto the embankment trail. And from this point on you can enjoy the ride! The trail is not paved mostly, but it is dry, hard-packed dirt (provided there hasn’t been too much rain!), is not too isolated most of the way, and is quite scenic and much more pleasant than riding on the main road. The one exception is where, if you look on a map, you have to cross the motorway. Here the road deviates from the Danube again (which is OK, because it is hard going along that section anyway, it’s basically marshland), goes over a bridge over the motorway, and eventually rejoins the Danube trail.

In particular, you can enjoy Koviljski rit, which is an area of protected marshland - hopefully there will be no invasion of poplar fluff as you can see on the right, when we rode the trail in May one year.

The last slightly tricky bit is leaving the embankment when you get close to Novi Sad - contrary to the old maps, you cannot go all the way along, there is an oil refinery there now! So you have to leave the trail and go through an industrial zone briefly, cross a small bridge over the Dunav-Tisa-Dunav canal and, hey presto, you are into Novi Sad.

Disclaimer

This latter way is longer, I think pushing 100km, but you get to see more of the Danube, and it has less dangerous road to ride on - the official Danube route people might not appreciate me suggesting this alternative route and I should emphasise it is at your own risk (hey, so is the official one, come to that), but I do think it is well worth considering.

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I don’t often post bike repair tips, basically because I am a rank amateur and will probably give you some dodgy advice, but here’s a little tip that helped me recently:

I am a disc-brake newbie this season and am incredibly amazingly happy with them! Disc-brakes rule, and I reckon Avid BB5s are a pretty good buy if you’re on a budget - they are just a vast improvement on V-brakes, what can I say!

AVID BB5 BALL BEARING MTB REAR DISC BRAKE 160mm,Rotor

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One of the things you have to watch out for, though, is not to get any sort of lubricant on the rotor, or else you are in some trouble - you’ve heard the story of the “woman driver” (always is) who “oiled the brakes” on her car because they were squeaking? Well, there is a very good reason why you don’t want any greasy, oily stuff near your brakes - they are somewhat dependent on friction to work properly, and lubricants exist for the sole purpose of eliminating friction. Need I say more?

Anyway, somehow, whilst cleaning my cassette (which REALLY wants replacing actually) I inadvertently seem to have got some grease on the rear disc rotor because when I subsequently went out for a ride I had virtually zero stopping power on the back brake.

What to do? Well, thank heavens for forums - I put out a plea for help on MTBR (probably the best MTB forum out there) and within minutes I got this solution:

1) Take the wheel off.

2) Take out the pads - easy, just pull out the little caliper in the middle and the pads come completely loose and you can fish them out.

3) Turn your oven on to 200 C and pop the pads in - set the timer for about 20 minutes.

4) While the pads are baking (to burn up any grease/oil), pop the wheel in the bath while your wife is out and wash the rotor with a liberal dose of Fairy Liquid or other household detergent and rinse.

5) Now the slightly dodgy part - get some fairly fine grade sandpaper (i.e. not really harsh scratchy stuff) and give the freshly baked pads a vigorous sanding for 10-20 seconds, using circular motions.

6) With a similar grade sandpaper, go round the rotor with the sandpaper on both sides, making tangential strokes (i.e. not along the circumference and not radially either) first one way, then the other, so you make a light cross-hatch pattern. Don’t go crazy - you want to roughen up the rotors a LITTLE bit, just enough to get some additional friction going, but light enough to get smoothed out after just a couple of big descents.

Now, put it all back together (you may need to loosen both sides of the brake to get the pads in more easily) and you should be back in business!

This worked for me so if you have accidentally lubed up your disc brakes, this might help. As ever, these instructions are provided as-is - any work you do on your bike is at your own risk! In particular, I can’t be sure that all types of pad will take a roasting in the oven - they SHOULD do, they take enough heat when braking, but still, do this at your own risk, like I say.

Now to go and do some braking…

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Some early impressions

1) Spring couldn’t come soon enough: there MUST be some way to make winter more fun than pedalling furiously while standing still, but boy is it good to be back on the bike and in the woods!

2) Winter training works!: yes, a gym exercise bike (a trainer is not in the budget right now) is singularly useless, but it still got me straight on the real bike pretty much ready to ride, so if you’re really stuck I would say, forget running, swimming and the rest of it, get on something that at least resembles a bike.

3) XC racing is quite fun!: I never thought I’d say it, but I’ve entered a few XC races this year (more than I’d done in total to date), and it’s quite addictive! It gives you something to actively train for, and it’s kind of cool to see where you are as compared to other riders (nowhere really, but never mind!) I will hopefully write a little about the Serbian MTB racing scene some time - it’s pretty modest, but there are a couple of riders who have done well at the Balkan level. I haven’t competed against them, but rather in some “Hobby” and Open races, though there are still some strong riders there - have finished 11th, 6th and 13th so far (the last race my best effort, but strongest field unfortunately, including the Junior Champion!). Doesn’t sound that impressive, but if you discount the licensed/club riders from those races then it looks a lot better! It’s all good fun anyway and I might even think about racing in the Masters next year, if I have the time, fitness and improved technical skills (currently sadly lacking). Pictured is me on a muddy slippy downhill section in the first Open race of the year in Šid, on the slopes of Fruška gora.

4) A new bike always helps get you motivated!: I may present the new machine at a later date, but you can see it in the picture. Again, pretty modest by some people’s criteria, but a vast improvement for me - Giant Iguana frame, Rock Shox Tora forks, Shimano XT front and rear gears, Avid BB5 brakes…

All round, a pretty good machine for my needs - disc brakes make an amazing difference in stopping power. Just don’t touch the rotor after a long spell of downhill braking. Ahem, the blister has pretty much healed up now, thanks. A few things to iron out to get it more up to scratch for demanding race conditions, but I am pretty happy.

5) Riding with stronger riders than yourself is good for you! Gradually drifted into a few training rides with some of the competitive riders, including the former national champion who owns a bike shop round the corner from me. Boy, that really makes all the difference! And I called my earlier pace of riding “training”… ha! Those guys really push it - which you have to do if you want to improve fitness, of course. Until now I have been fairly content to plod along at the same pace all year, but I can really see improvement now.

I am going to do a couple more races this year for sure, especially the “Open” races where anyone can ride and which have proved very successful - the next is on the 10th May. Then there is the Fruška Gora MTB Marathon, which I have written about repeatedly. I am still debating whether to try the 80km distance - it’s next month, so I need to see if my endurance has improved before then! I have got my time for the first 30km down by half an hour since I first did it, so things have definitely improved!

Also this year we do want to do some recreational riding, i.e. strap everything we need onto our bikes and head through the mountains, but there is no firm plan yet. It looks like August might be the main event though - I’ll keep you posted.

So, keep riding, I’m off for a ride up to the Novi Sad Petrovaradin Fortress to practice those tricky downhills!

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I refer of course not to the Good Book, wherein the Apostle Paul merely mentions in passing that “physical training is of some value” (1 Tim 4:8), but rather to The Mountain Biker’s Training Bible by Joe Friel.

Anyone who takes mountain-biking remotely seriously will probably have to at least give this book a hearing at some point - zillions of bikers can’t be wrong.

Who’s it for?

There’s way too much to say about this book if you haven’t looked into it yet, but I’ll try to summarise it in brief: the MTB Bible focuses not on MTB technique (which is the only complaint regarding this book that I have been able to find), but on what training you need to be doing to get better and fitter for the next season and the next and the next…

The Mountain Biker’s Bible is for anyone who has at least some sort of competitive goal in mountain-biking, even if it’s just to get faster and fitter as a goal in itself.

What’s in it?

As Friel says, the book is about “systematic, methodical training” and let me tell you right off, very systematic and methodical it is too, such that the casual reader hoping for a few quick training tips will probably give up in despair very quickly. Friel basically describes an approach whereby we set goals for the season - which for many will be MTB races on known dates - and then devise a training calendar which works up to these events and is based on a number of factors including existing fitness and number of hours we are able to devote to training. The calendar involves dividing the pre-season into cycles (pun intended) of increasingly demanding but varied training, punctuated by rest weeks, all of which is to ensure you train not so much harder but smarter. And I suppose that is it, in a nutshell - so try to remember this potted explanation when you open the book and are first confronted by all those tables and calendars! It’s all quite simple when you give it a chance to soak in.

The “Bible” also contains a great deal of material on the theory of fitness and training, nutrition, and much much more - and it’s fair to say that the book’s “scriptural” claims are not far off the mark in terms of it being pretty much a comprehensive guide to mountain bike training.

Personal perspective

Now to get things clear - I have sworn blind on this blog many a time that I am no MTB racer, I am more into rolling along the mountains of Serbia enjoying the view, and could probably do that with narry a shred of training beforehand.

However, everyone’s got to have a sport (perhaps that’s what St. Paul wanted to say) - something to stave off heart disease, boredom and the spare tyre - something more than just going out for a little ride every now and then.

So mine might as well be mountain-biking! And while I have no ambitions to become the next… er… whoever is a famous mountain-biking champ, I have been bitten by the bug just a little. Having ridden a couple of races and realised they are good fun and that, hey, I can beat at least 50% of the people out there, I have got the niggling urge to get better. And you don’t get better with random training, you need some sort of program.

To cut a long story short, though I haven’t been able to devise a full-featured training plan “according to Friel” - and probably I don’t need one at my level (and, ahem, age) as I am not planning to get TOO serious - the Mountain Biker’s Bible has been a great help in making all those trips to the gym this winter actually make sense. Even generally applying the principles has made sure I have improved all the different “types” of fitness that will place me in good stead once we emerge from winter. Specifically I am aiming for the evil Fruška Gora 80km Marathon in mid-May - and I really want to put a dent in it this time (see here for details)!

A road ride the other day with some of the top local guys (who’ve been living and breathing Friel a lot longer than me) confirmed that my fitness coming out of the winter slumber is, probably thanks to this book, better than it has ever been, meaning I could just about keep pace with them! If that’s not a recommendation I don’t know what is!

Not got a copy of the Mountain Biker’s Bible yet? Check it out on Amazon.com - cheap at twice the price!

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Things started fine, got warmed up, and headed up onto our “mountain”. The ridge was clear to begin with and then turned to packed down snow, which was great for riding on and really scenic (sorry, no pictures, this was a “serious” ride!). But with the temperature heading below zero up in the hills the major problem, not for the first time this winter, became my fingers, which by about the 25th kilometre were ready to drop off. At least, I assumed they were, I couldn’t feel them. And that was on the flat - I still had to descend the mountain, a bone-chilling 10 minute free-fall.

Well, I got home with fingertips intact, just about, though it was VERY unpleasant. This is a real limiting factor to winter riding - I can handle everything else with a few judicious layers, but your fingers are horribly exposed. Full-fingered gloves might have helped (ahem, I was wearing open-top jobs), but not much, the cold gets through soon enough. So my question is, do THESE work:

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In case you can’t see the above, or you get some silly USB heated gloves, they are heated gloves that could be used for cycling. Anyone tried them? Do they do the job? There are some pretty inexpensive pairs around, so I might consider investing… And then even freezing fingers won’t stop me getting out there in winter-time!

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Last years goals

But I do have some secondary goals, and did have last year too. One of them was to put in a half-decent time in the May Fruška Gora Big Marathon (like, under 6 hours!) Unfortunately I didn’t come close to achieving this - I got ill that very week, hadn’t trained nearly enough and the weather was absolutely atrocious, with the whole hill range turned to mud and EVERYBODY’S times up by at least 25%. The result was that I only raced the Small Marathon (31km) with the sole aim of just getting round, which I did, though probably exacerbating the flu which proceeded to last longer than it should have.

I also did a lot of other really awesome stuff, like this, this and this, which I really can’t complain about!

Tackling the Big One

But the 80km Big Marathon was still niggling me so toward the end of the season, after a fair bit of intensive training, I decided to do the route on my own, just to see how I would do.

Well, to cut an 80 km story short: not too well. I blazed the first half and seemed to be well on track for a 5-hour time, which would have been ridiculously good for me. But it was not to be - it WAS already a bit late in the season and the leaves and mud were building up, I had several technical problems and more to the point my endurance seemed to be lacking. The second half of the course was FAR harder than I remembered, with some really dodgy churned-up sections, and more to the point seeming endless uphill sections (and a few really hairy downhills too) and it just went on and on!

In the end it actually started getting dark and I had to ditch the last few km, but it was clear I would have made no improvement on my first attempt, two years ago. Pretty depressing!

This year, though..!

I still want to crack that race and prove to myself I can do it! In ideal conditions I think I could do a lot better, but the fact remains that my long-distance endurance seems to be questionable and that I have to do some more work on that. Could be age catching up with me, could also be my metabolism, which demands constant feeding even when I am static! Presumably I burn calories like there’s no tomorrow when I am really working hard. So I guess the key is to get more of those “base” rides in at this time of year - and those are the ones that are the least fun to do indoors on a trainer or whatever (2-3 hours pedalling indoors! Come on..! You need serious motivation for that!) Well, I will let you know how I get on, and also what I’ve been doing to stay fit this winter - maybe we can bounce some ideas around.

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