What a day, talk about contrasts from yesterday. Chucking it down with rain, misty (although not too cold) and a technical limestone karst forest which was so rocky underfoot I didn’t so much run as shuffle.
I went straight from the car to the start and was like a drowned rat by number 1, the buff keeping the rain rather than sweat out of my eyes. #1 was a looong leg and I took it carefully, skirting the edges of the enormous sink holes being careful to exit the rim at the right place, keeping an eye on the compass.
2/3rds of the way round I was still having a clean run but catching people on my course and started to get distracted. #9 to #10 I skirted the edge of a sinkhole and then ended up trying to make the terrain fit on a parallel route. Eventually, nothing made sense and I quickly bailed out
Results are now out and I am pleased to be 6th overall but now 4 mins down on a podium place it will be hard to make that up at the half way point.
This afternoon after a very lazy lunch at our hotel in the aptly named village of Slope we headed out to Skocjanske Jame caves nearby. The system, a UNESCO world heritage site ia 6km in length and has one of the largest chambers in Europe, The Martel Chamber, 146 metres in height,120 metres wide and 300 metres long!
We had a very scary guide who always seemed to instil silence when she finished a talk with ‘any questions’ but the caves were amazing!
