Východniarska 100 / Eastern Hundred (108km / 5257m+), Kysak - Košice, 05.08.2023
The Eastern Fling
I was very much looking forward to the Východniarska 100. I was especially looking forward to enjoying it in peace and without the stress of cut off times or other limits. That I will once again spend the day and night in nature, in the company of the best community and get to know places I have never been before. My expectations were fully met, even surpassed 😅
After my initial confusion with accommodation and logistics, I received an offer from Lucky D., which was not to be refused - that I could stay at her place for the night and that she would also drive me from Kysak to Prešov and vice versa. We also packed Julka the nice girl with us, and that was it.
Like everyone else, after getting off the train in Kysak, I got a slap of the heat in the face, the stifling and sweltering wave gave me a second one. A few minutes before, during the train ride, I admired the mythical Bokšov and Holica out of the window, towering over Hornád river and our air-conditioned EX607 Tatran train. This is where we are supposedly going to climb tomorrow and it's going to be epic...
After a hot slap in Kysak, a nice dinner in Prešov (oh... what a life 😎) and a presentation in Kysak, we go with the others to the streets of Kysak to look for a place where it's alive. The place is called Stefano bar. You'll have to wait an hour for the pizza there, but it's probably worth it, it looked great and it was really lively there. People drank, joked, Pouš was renamed Pauš, there was an applause to last year's SUT league winners and placed, as well as this year's potential kings and queens and I don't know who else.
However, we soon set off for Prešov, we still need to solve some technical issues with watches and maps and prepare for a hot, sleepless night. Everything fell silent and the dog barked. He barked for several hours. I'm constantly waking up from naps, keep running to the toilet, even though I didn't overdo it with the hydration yesterday. I must have gulped down the moisture from the air or something, who knows... it starts to rumble in the morning. At first very distant, gradually approaching, persistent and ominous. And those poor naps are over. I listen to the thunder and wonder what it will be like today. Will we drown in a storm today? Will lightning strike us? How long will it rain? Will I have dry feet at least for a while? Can I mentally endure not having dry feet at all? The fading sky is illuminated by intense lightning and the downpour is getting heavier.
We get up, have coffee, breakfast, toilet, start packing, final touches. Someone was packing, someone was packing like... Julka once boasted somewhere that she could pack effectively even in a dream, but somehow I don't believe her anymore 😂
Fortunately, rescue comes in the form of an SMS from the V100 Organizers that the start has been postponed by an hour due to storm activity. Great, we can still sleep not for an hour and Julka can pack not in peace 😅
We are moving to Kysak amid intense downpour and storms. We have a back-up plan that if the race happens to be cancelled, we'll go for a little run anyway if the weather calms down later. Fortunately, Belo didn't give in, and at seven o'clock, he and Rado sent us out into the downpour, thunder and lightnings. If he had to cancel it, I would feel sorry for him, because I can(not) imagine how much effort he had to put into the V100 resurrection-after-three-years and it was visible in all the details: beautiful T-shirts, precise markings, even more beautiful diplomas, perfectly secured aid stations with absolutely endlessly kind volunteers. It would be a great shame.
According to radar and information, the storm should end within half an hour. But no one knew until which half an hour. Not even a radar. It seems to me that it rained and thundered all morning. But you stop noticing the thunder, get used to it and don't deal with it anymore. The rain was light at times, heavy sometimes, and it made me nervous. I was also nervous that I somehow couldn't breathe uphill, my head was spinning and I imagined myself in bed blissfully closing my eyes and falling asleep. I blissfully close my eyes... but the rumbling of thunder takes me out of the gloom and doesn't allow me to lie down somewhere in the mud and fall asleep.
So, as you have already noticed, the race is started and we are running through the woods. Or rather, we climb up the first vertical, run down the next muddy slippery vertical, run under the railway line and again run up the opposite hill. I say to myself - there will be no photos today - I'm not bothered to pull out my phone in this marsh. However, I have a different opinion at the Jánošík viewpoint, because, admit it, it would be impossible not to take a picture of this (even though in theory I could steal the photos from Pauš or Maťo M, who will surely have three hundred of them 😅):
And so there are alternating wood paths, forest trails, runnable and rough, here and there a nettle field or an ancient overgrown forest road full of grass, fallen branches, sedges, and other lush vegetation.
The woods gloomy,
Gloomy woods,
depression falls on me with urge...
I can see myself in bed
For Sunday though I have to wait.
After K1 Malá Lodina - 17.km I catch up with Heňa and we miss the turn to Bokšov together. We go back a bit and the turn is such that vertically up the stones and slippery mud, between trees and rocks, the path is only indicated here. In one section, Heňa suddenly hangs from a tree, good thing that a photographer was there and captured her (not only in a photo, but also hand-held). It's funny here 😁 But beautiful. A nice boost compared to the monotonous forest roads down there. Soon we are up on the ridge, the downpour has stopped and beautiful views and scenery open up to us. We take pictures, film and take pictures.
Passing the Bokšov ridge is one of the gems on the V100 route. The path (invisible here and there) winds between the steep rock formations above the abyss, around somehow twisted trees, is lined with velvety grass and provides views of the distant surroundings. The clouds are parting and the sun is starting to peek out, finally 😅 I'm reviving a little, swallowing the sun's rays with every cell of mine. Burnt trees are rising all around, as a remnant of last year's fire - I've never seen anything like this before. Many trees are also fallen, thrown over the sidewalk. Heňa has a such a theory:
"I think that Belo rolls the trees down here deliberately. He comes here in his free time and wheeyyy!"
From Bokšov and Holica the downhill leads somewhere nowhere and connects to the blue trail. We run together with Heňa and the Lithuanian girl in pleasant conversation and and enjoyable summer weather.
After a hundred years, the Blue Trail will lead us through forests and meadows to K2 Košická Belá (32.km). The sun is getting hot and it is sultry and muggy, but the aid station is alive and cheerful. I am fascinated by the surroundings, it looks magical to me, it breathes Slovak history 😁.
We howl and drink as much as we can, replenish our supplies, and continue, only the two of us without the Lithuanian girl. The climb to Železný vrch is dark and gloomy, it reminds me very much of the section from Sklené Teplice towards Konický vrch (in Štiavnicke vrchy). But it gets toasty behind Železný vrch. I guess a pleasant forest road led there, among other things, past the Lajoška Cottage, where back in times there used to be an aid station with supposedly excellent soup. Today it is quiet and deserted.
Between Idčianske sedlo and Zlatoidské lúky, we meet 50km runners in the opposite direction, just converging from Kojšovská hoľa. We slightly confuse each other as to whether we're going the right direction, but yeah, yes, we are, us and them. We will be running down from Kojšovská hoľa in the dead of night... but for now it's daylight and the descent to Sedlo pod Suchým vrchom is quite nice. There is K3 (47.km) and a happy party, an excellent omelet, and oh.. COFFEE... 😍 what a delight! In today's weather, I don't like sweets at all (except for Coke). I'm scraping bread with Lunter spread, cucumbers, an omelet, salty crackers, and for the first time in history I'm eating bread with lard and salt at the race. Not bad at all! I make an agreement with myself that I need to practice this more often.
We say goodbye to the cheerful K3 party and continue running to the turnoff to another V100 gem - Turniská. There is a short intense vertical climb, otherwise an educational path, leading to it, and the effort is worth it.
The vertical continues for a while beyond Turniská, before turning over to a pleasant ridge and smoothly transitioning into a steep descent to Sedlo Zemička. There, you have to make the Folkmar loop, which some did not understand, or misunderstood. But we are not only insanely beautiful, but also fiercely intelligent and we got it right and at the first push 😎 first left taking the yellow trail (again) vertically, briefly but intensively up, at Folkmarská skala to take pictures of the views (the sun slowly bends towards the horizon, afternoon storm clouds are forming, the crouching Kojšov sits below and the majestic Kojšovská hoľa rises above it), then taking another yellow trail round down and along the forest road back to Sedlo Zemička.
The descent to K5 Kojšov (km 58) was short and rocky, and we even ran across someone's yard. I had to talk to the horses and take a picture of their asses 😅
We have a longer break at K5 in the "Tavern under a hoľa", the offer is an excellent soup, coffee, porcelain and more stuff, plus drop bags. We change into dry clothes. I change my socks and slather Vaseline on my scuffed dirty feet. Then it occurred to me that I could have first rinsed my feet off in the fountain in the courtyard of the inn... Oh, well... my IQ had apparently run out of IQ at the Folkmar loop. Well, whatever... if it's a dirt then let it be a proper dirt! But Heňa takes this opportunity and I envy her a little 😆 but I can FCK it now with already oily feet. Almost clean, almost dry and almost fragrant, we start the long climb to Kojšovská hoľa (8 km and about 800 m elevation gain). After about three hundred meters, we are neither dry nor fragrant anymore. It's still steamy. Clouds are kicking up, a thunderstorm and downpour are sure to come.
Under the Picture, we meet the returning vomiting Monika, she is said to be tired of it and is going back to Kojšov. It's a shame, because she had great split times, at K1 she was half an hour earlier than me and an hour before us at K5, so she's had a great run so far. We try to persuade her to at least come up with us to hoľa and there to decide what next, but to no avail.
It's slowly getting dark, the first flashes of lightning and subtle distant thunder appear. We walk in silence, each immersed in her own thoughts. We are having a great time together, whether in conversation or in silence, I am grateful for so many kilometers on the route shared with Heňa. It was very nice. We turn on our headlamps, the path changes from deciduous to coniferous, lined with blueberries and sprinkled here and there with a hint of granite. I like this, here I'm home! We swing over the peak and after a short descent through the meadow, around 49 Pillars of Peace whitened in the light of our headlamps, we arrive at K5 Kojšova hoľa (66.km), Katka's Tea Room. There's Lucka D. and she's telling us off for where we have been for so long 😅 Yeah, we kept hanging out somewhere in the woods... We'll have coffee, great mint tea, eat something, fill our bottles with liquids, refresh our souls with the cheerful crew of K5 and get going. An eight-kilometer descent to Zlatá Idka awaits us.
The eight-kilometer descent to Zlatá Idka went by rather quickly. I'm suddenly doing quite well, I feel a rush of energy, finally starting to breathe comfortably. After all, it was about time, after 70 kilometers 🙈 Lightning strikes all around without stopping, illuminating the surrounding horizon from all directions. However, the rain is such that here I come, no I don't, yes, no, I do, I don't... so we put the rain jackets on, then off again, but in the end the rain didn't show up. Heňa's groin starts to get irritated during running, she slows down. Slowly, we somehow make it to Zlatá Idka at K6 (74.km) together and then I leave her. I need to speed up now when I can. I don't know what drives me forward, whether it's something that hit me, probably caffeine, or adrenaline from impending storms and constant lightning all around. I was really under pressure, kept pricking my ears to see if the thunder was getting closer or farther away, watching where the scariest clouds were gathering and somehow I hoped that it would bypass us all.
It's 12 kilometers to Vyšný Klátov - first a long climb and later an even longer forest road going more or less along the contour and more or less sloping down. I'm progressing well up there, having finally caught my rhythm, my breath is no longer shallow and I'm not surrounded by gloom anymore. I run down like clockwork, the reflectors guide me beautifully along the route and it goes by quickly. A huge calm orange moon came out from behind the clouds as a contrast to the opposite flashing sky. In the forest I hear a sound here and there, the wind is playing with the trees and gets quiet at times. I approach the small bear cub sitting quietly and motionless by the road. It looks at me with luminous eyes. It doesn't move. And it's not a bear cub, it's a big stump with reflectors installed next to each other as eyes. I hereby salute the humorist who staged this. I almost got scared 😅 There are white parasol mushrooms along the road, they are everywhere and there are a lot of them. Such a good fried parasol mushroom schnitzel wouldn't be bad at all 😋
Later, some animal from the forest screams at me, maybe a bird, I have no idea. The sound goes parallel with me for several hundred meters. Shit, it feels really weird, the bird probably jumps from tree to tree, follows me and hoots something to me, maybe "don't stink here so much and fuck off!" or "You're doing great, keep going, but stop making such a stink and fuck off!" or something like that. I took this advice to heart and fucked off.
I finally run up to K7 Vyšný Klátov (87.km) and they say they have pasta. Yes, throw it at me! The pasta was really excellent, as was the atmosphere at the aid station and the encouragement from the volunteers. The subsequent section led through meadows and forests, between hay bales and past strange houses, under illuminated transmitters, across asphalt roads. I'm running out of energy, feeling low. I don't know if my adrenaline, caffeine or some other -ine has gone down, or if I'm just out of sugar... but it's getting hard, everything hurts and I'm tired. I arrived at the last aid station K8 Alpinka (96.km) in a rather broken state, but Paťo and company lift my spirits, praise me, cheer me on, bring me the blue from the skies. What more could a runner in an advanced stage of decomposition want 🙏
I will fill up the water for the last section and climb the little hill. I'm having a hard time, am fed up with everything. Physically I climb the hill, but mentally I sink to the bottom into the deepest bowels of my mental self and there I find the very vulgarisms. They come to my mind involuntarily during my silent inner monologues. For example (read in a calm, quiet monotone voice): I need to go through that fucking bloody forest. I still have to climb over that fucking shithole. Otherwise, please note that I'm not like that in ordinary life, huh? 😁 unless behind a wheel.
And so, somehow vulgarly, I finally get under Hradová. The lights of Košice are already close. I delve into the sleeping signs of civilization. A fire is burning in the shed. I have the feeling that someone is sitting in there quietly and watching me. There is no one in there. I go under the lamps, around some buildings and I'm at a lookout. I take pictures of the final view.
Just a downhill left... the path is steep, overgrown with crevices, and across it is a fallen unclimbable tree. I'm making my way through the wilderness, I can't see below my feet. The tree is beyond my strength and my short legs. Apparently, there were Roxor bars somewhere, but I probably didn't see them because I was tired. I'm getting desperate, the accumulated frustration needs to get out. It flies out of me uncontrollably into the silence of darkness (read in a frustrated, angry, screaming voice echoing into the night):
The sound of my pissed off voice surprises me. I look at myself dispassionately from the perspective of a random passerby and start laughing. Oh, well 😂 the steam is released, let's finish this.
It's getting lighter, the sky is slowly fading. I run through the streets, then down the stairs, and the finish line is in front of me. It is long. It is quite long. While I ran through it, it dawned. But I'm finally at the finish gate. The time is 4:52, my running time is 21:52. Not great, not terrible... I'm surprised that I'm the sixth woman, because I had this feeling of tailing along. At Klátov, they even told me that there were only two women behind me (otherwise I didn't follow the standings at all). But I'm glad that reality was a little better and that I can now turn off my watch and not run anywhere.
It's kind of quiet and deserted here at Ryba Anička. A few bodies lie loosely thrown under blankets on sunbeds, or in sleeping bags on the terrace. The guys write down my number, name and time and congratulate me. Well thank you. For everything. I feel deflated. I shuffle off to the shower and bury all the manure deep in the bowels of my backpack. Clean, dry and maybe even a little fragrant, I sit down for a stew and with my fellow V100 finishers, who have just finished, we discuss the past hours, experiences and impressions. Everyone is kind of like WTF?? 😂 The stew was delicious, BTW.
The downpour starts, a real torrential deluge. It is said that there was also a storm at night at Kojšovská hoľa and they had to stop some runners. The downpour is getting stronger. Another couple of runners come finishing, soaked to the skin, deflated and with an insane look in their eyes. This really was a nice run. I'm getting my diploma and it's time to go home. With Mišo and Maťa, the female winner of the V100, we somehow sail along the highway to Liptov and I finally settle into the longed-for bed, because it's already quite a bit of Sunday 😁
I enjoyed Východniarska 100 in peace and without stress from cut off times or other limits. Once again, I spent a day and night in beautiful nature, in the company of the best community, and I got to know beautiful places where I had never been before and never dreamed of. My legs were dry about 5 minutes after the start and 5 minutes after Kojšov. My expectations were fully met, even surpassed😅 Thank you to Belo and his team for the perfectly organized Eastern fling, for the generous refreshments with a lot of solid, liquid and space energy, volunteers for their boundless care, kind words, humor and good spirit. I thank the weather for being actually quite kind and patient with us 😇 and congratulations to everyone who made it to the finish line on both routes.
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