Blidinje Bike Festival – bleeding on the sun! 🥵

We went for a biking weekend in Herzegovina with high hopes, but we were more satisfied with the food and the family bike ride than the UCI C1 XCM marathon! The beautiful rural area of Blidinje is a place to hike and go for some good food, but bike trails are not to be found. We rode mostly on unpaved roads, which for Sunday’s XCM was disqualifying for me as the sun burned the road so much that I had to drop out of the race.

00:00 – 00:17 Intro
00:17 – 02:27 Family Bike Ride
02:27 – 03:07 Hajdučke Vrleti
03:07 – 03:25 Accommodation
03:25 – 05:41 UCI C1 XCM Blidinje

[Music] this weekend we visited bed Nature Park in Bosnia which we honestly had never heard of before after a good breakfast we started the Saturday Family Bike Ride which was great for exploring the surroundings and relaxing before what awaited me on Sunday uh UCI C1 Marathon an impressive amount of people showed up for Saturday at various points we stopped to learn more about the area we were cycling through the guy told us about the dgap stone block necropolis from the Middle Ages categorized as a UNESCO heritage [Music] the first culinary stop was at rats where we ate traditional Bosnian Specialties as you can see it was almost an elbow fight over how delicious they were [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] care [Music] [Music] the pearl of bleeding is is a restaurant Huch beside the accommodation they offer excellent [Music] food the face the face of evil on the news [Music] tonight we decided to try the traditional offer and go with puras and haala empty plates show enough but next time someone should stop us as we also ordered pancakes which were huge they end luckily the accommodation was nearby and boy it was a good one it just had opened this year and everything was brand [Music] new Sunday got here with the excitement about the UCI C1 cross country Marathon the route with 83 km and more than 2,000 M of climb seemed like an excellent choice to get a good feeling about all the available trails and viewpoints in the area unfortunately this turned quite different but you’ll see what I’m talking about as first kilometers were on the paved Road our flying start was organized meaning we rode behind an official vehicle before we could start pushing for positions we also got a really good sticker for the top tube which allowed us to follow points of interest on the route such as feed zones water points and significant climbs unfortunately the marathon did not have any Trails but it was purely on unpaved surfaces with only one technical section which was just a rain rot on the road the end even though we were at higher altitudes the summer heat wve was burning heavily as you can see the temperatures were above 37 and still Rising regardless of being well prepared with proper hydration and rest after 50 km I decided to drop out of the race it was not an easy decision but I would suggest everyone to be conscientious about the health dangers in these extreme conditions listen to your body signs and rather be safe than [Music] sorry overall the conclusion is that bleeding is a beautiful place but cycling wise better for gravel bikes the organization of the race and everything we got was on a world class level but the area is so Rural and untouched that there are no official biking trails around if there will be a next time I would rather go hiking the amazing mountains spanning to the sky from such vast valleys