3.11.24

It was a cold and windswept morning in Tbilisi, Georgia. I was in the taxi to the Tbilisi Hills golf course by 8 am and heading to the start point of the Tbilisi Hills trail race organised by traillab.ge. I arrived at the start over an hour early (set up in the car park of the golf club) at one of the highest points in the city at 720 m. There was coffee and cakes on offer and generally good organisation from Trail Labs. They organise a series of races throughout the year covering distances from 7 to 105 km all on trails in Georgia.

The race started at 10 am and it was still around 8 C (factor in wind chill on top of that). The course followed a tarred road for about 3 km before following a typical stony trail for Tbilisi with many sharp turns downhill for about 3 km. The trail has thorny bushes on either side making for a fun experience. At the bottom of the hill, the route followed quiet streets before climbing back up a steep trail for 5 km. I enjoy climbing and am not so great on the flats so I caught up with some people here. The last few km were along a ridge but my tendency to trip means that I did this at a steady pace.

I managed the 17.3 km with a chip time of 2:02:49 coming in 69th out of 116 finishers and 1st in my age group (55-59) but there were only 4 of us!

First male was Peter Molloy in 1:11:00 and first female was Tatiana Fedoseeva in 1:41:42.

Strider results