Race at Banat Marathon

On the 7th of August I took part together with my team mates at the 7th edition of the Banat Maraton at Garana (near Resita), a race I attended even when I could only be a spectator (or cameraman). This year organizers have made 4 tracks: 10 km, 30 km, 50 km and 80 km but I felt I was not able to attend long distance, especially given the experience last year when I made 80 km in almost 6 hours , so I preferred to choose the 50 km Race. This year I tried to attend a maximum distance of 65 km (except Medieval Marathon), to regain speed and power, necessary for XCO races.

You can see the RACE track on the map below. It was 54 km long with 1400 total climb, backwards to previous editions, of course not exactly the same roads and paths but the general idea was that the climbing on Semenic I had early in the race. Honestly I liked more the track last year, especially because now the Finnish Line was completely atypical for a marathon: on a descent part, in a 90 degrees curve, on the gravel …

The track was registered with Gakota 10. You can see it on Connect.Garmin and BikeMap or download the .GPX track.

The race started at around 10:15, 15 minutes after the start of the marathon and went pretty hard on the first climb. My position in the Start Loop didn’t helped me. There was a portion of the ridge and then descending followed by ascending to Semenic. Here I was far behind the main favorites, when my team mate Sergiu (Junior) got behind me. He made an excellent race with Junior National Champion, Losonti. Until I’ve got up on Semenic I’e got my pace back. I went with Losonti, Sergiu and Otniel, and later I’ve got near Fabian too. We then enter the forest, a part that I disliked (even last year) because there were many branches of roads, many large puddles, fallen wood and it was difficult to follow the marks because everything was descending on a false flat zone, so I was riding with high speed. My gps helped me here, at least to know the direction in advance but I could not be 100% sure because the gps track offered by the organizers was not updated with the latest changes of the track.

Here I’ve got far ahead juniors, while Otniel was far from me and Fabian. Soon the descending part started, on a single trail, towards Trei Ape lake… When I reached Trei Ape I felt powerless so at the Feed Zone (the last) I’ve got a banana and I refilled my bottle with water. I continued to ride towards finish line, trying to recover energy and not to be overtaken from behind. On the last climb I saw my team mate, Tudor but I didn’t managed to get closer to him more than 30 seconds and as the last km were descending, he has won another 10-15 seconds in front of me.

I finnished on the 11th place overall and on the 10th position in my age category, very dissapointing result for me. My team mate Sergiu finnished on the second place in his category, and Vlad won at the 30 km race. The first place at 50 km was won by Rosioru, followed by Madaras, and Stancu on the 3rd place. The 80 km marathon was won by Vouter (a belgian who won at Prima Evadare), followed by Tudy and Luci.