Blatersa (combination of words ‘blato’ (Croatian for ‘mud’) and traversa (Croatian for ‘traverse’) started as an underground event five years ago and in first editions it had less than 10 people. Then somehow, runners found it interesting to run the whole traverse of Medvednica mountain (50km in length). In night. In winter. Without support! 🙂 The race is held regardless of the weather and the worst weather we had on 4th edition (year 2011.) when we started in Podsused at midnight at some 14°C, and only two hours later we were in sub-zero temperatures, wind, snow and thunders. More than half people quit and the ones that arrived to St. Ivan Zelina were mostly under-cooled.

This weekend the weather was no problem. 80 runners gathered at midnight and started their whole night journey. This is not more an underground race (there were 10 people arriving  from Slovenia, so it’s hard to still call it ‘underground’), but between start and the finish line, you are on your own. Only two checkpoints on the course, no markings, no feed zones or aid stations. But lot of mud :). If you get lost, you just head south and you’ll get to some road.

First in the finish line was Kristijan Šivak aka geMpard (4:56h, new course record), following Vedran Rzaunek and Marko Orešković. The first girl was Jelena Brezak (6:32h, women course record) and then Marija Trontelj and Neža Jurjavčić. Two of the guys didn’t want to wait for a bus or drive with someone back, so they ran the whole course back. Congratulations to Hrvoje Filipčić (14:37h) and Robert Bernat (19:33h) for doing the Blatersa-reversa (that’s 100K!!)