- ODO 2580km
- Location Sumadijski, Serbia
- Weather 25-37℃ Hot
- Feelings Hit the wall and broke through it
Weather you’ve run a marathon or been made to lap the field as a high school punishment, everyone has an experience of hitting the wall.
Your tells your body to move and your body resists. Eyes loose focus. Usual nimble skill becomes the sway of the drunk.
But if you keep telling your muscles to move they continue to obey. The work never gets easier but, once you know you can do it, you get faster.
Today I didn’t want to move it felt like I’d hit the wall just like my first marathon but I got on the bike and I kept going. I kept going thanks to a layer of cloud that meant the sun didn’t reach its full 37° here until midday for once. I began dreaming about my future live as a DJ, influenced by the book Uprooted I’ve been reading.
I stopped for lunch under a broken section of bridge with the goal of sleeping through the heat of the day. Unfortunately others had used this dead end road to dump piles of rubbish including a pile of mouldy potatoes. The smell didn’t seem too bad when I stopped but as I lay there it built in the glaring heat of the sun it built into an unbearable stench.
I’m glad I moved on though. Down the road I stopped to sleep by a graveyard under a large tree. One of the many wild dogs came to sniff at my fast browning banana peel in the dirt. Round the corner came Martin from Switzerland. His bike was almost identical. We chatted and shared stories of the road for a good long time. He was heading for Georgia and gave me some good blogs to read of those a little a head of me including Pedal Promise for when I get signal.
I finished the days in the hills. Climbing away from town as the sun set beside an unfinished motorway. I’m camped with a view of the flickering lights of the houses 500m below. As I get into my tent a firefly glints by. Reminding me of traveling to Geneva with my dad when I was a child.
The distance to Sofia I could cover in one day at a push but the climb is another story. My hope is to get to the border, get signal and then I’ll know what to do and where to go when I arrive in town. It has been nice being offline though for sure.