Jarna Klasika is one of those races in the season, which just can not be missed. Played every year on the last Saturday of May, it is treated as a prelude to the main event in my cycling calendar - Tatry Tour. Why?
1. Route. Let's be honest - you can not see too much during the race. The best remembered moments are usually the rear wheel, buttocks and possibly darkness. Possibly sometimes an ambulance, buffet or tire growing while pumping. There is an increasingly popular custom, re-crossing routes to see what you have not seen. Real racing on Jarna begins fortunately only near the famous driveway next to the garbage, so there is some time to look around (excluding the very fast start). And there is something to watch. Fields, villages, mountains in the background. Everything is great.
2. Hrebienok - there are few driveways that tire me so much as the last 3 kilometers with an average slope of ~ 10%. It sounds pretty simple on paper, but every year I see the same funny scenes before the finish. Mothers with a pram who are traveling at the same speed as riders. Contractions and contortions at the finish line. Silent curses ... and a little louder too. This year, thanks to the broken front deraillee I was riding so slowly that I regretted the lack of running shoes in the back pocket. Laughs which does not measure ;-)
3. Gypsies. Whoever visited northern Slovakia a little, knows how lively villages are. Whoever did not visit, can read entry from winter. Racing is one of the few moments in which local Gypsy villages, instead of throwing stones, playing in the mud, or aiming with a wooden stick in the spokes, stand on the route and cheer. Every year in the same places, the same children, with the same flags. I do not know how it happens that they do not grow up, but I will certainly confront photos taken over the next years to look for differences. Honestly, however, I always have a vision somewhere in the back of my head that in the case of a bomb and moving to the last position on one of the driveways I will turn into their dinner - it's a good motivation to stay in the group.
4. Candies, chocolates, chocolate bars. The times when you traveled to Slovakia for student chocolates have gone forever ... or not. I do not understand its true phenomenon, but I have a few other sweet sweets I can not get with us and every year something surprises me. This year, next to the bananas in chocolate came the best, in my opinion, Milka, i.e. a salted pretzel. And that, as we all know, after the race is allowed to eat everything, it always comes back more citizen than it left the country.
5. Departure. Rarely, it happens that we drive over 1000km just to ride a bike once only - although of course it still happens anyway. In the Tatras, we usually spend a minimum of 3 days and it is always great. In contrast to the Polish side, the south is more or less, better, nicer. Above all, on the roads, what matters most to us. Every year we also manage to find some new, surprising route.
6. Cast. Although both Jarna and the Tatra are usually won by the same person from Hungary, it is usually a peloton, which I do not care about. There is a very good chance that if you drive around Slovakia during the week of the races, most of the riders you will encounter will be from Poland. Not only that, usually they are people with whom I usually go around Warsaw. The whole trip can therefore be treated as "Getaway with friends over the weekend"
7. Slovaks. Slovaks are usually terrible. I treat a longer time under an average hypermarket in Poprad as an extreme sport, because I have the impression that everyone will try to kill me. However, they compensate with low prices - on the market, which looks much better in this city, you can easily eat a pizza or pasta for 6 euros. In addition, they can always surprise something: this time, the car burning on the street, moved the race to a bicycle path stretching sideways.
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