So it's hard to compare a race in Bosnia to a race in the US. But now that some time has passed and others have given opinions, it seems that many of the things that my husband and I thought were not great, others felt the same way. Overall, this race is an awesome idea and brings people together in a country divided. That said, Bosnia is so divided and political that it can be hard to do great things there. As it turns out, it's really hard to have a point to point 80 mile race. We found out afterwards that a few aid stations never happened due to political difficulties. We felt there were some sections that were way too long without aid. We also felt some sections were just not that pretty or scenic. That said Jahorina mountain itself and surrounding area is absolutely gorgeous however we did not get to spend much of the race in this area at all. There were actually 4 distances, we of course did the longest. After the race we realized that a couple of the shorter distance actually had the best views and courses. One even went through the olympic bobsled course and summited the top of Jahorina mountain, why didn't I get to do that for all my hard work?! Now it has been announced that the longer courses will be changed to loops to incorporate the best parts of the shorter course. This is awesome news as not only will it make for a beautiful course but will also alleviate the problems with not having enough aid on such a long point to point course. So even though our experience wasn't all the best, they have learned from these experiences and are making changes for the better which shows great race management.

The long race which is really the only one I can speak for, had seriously challenging terrain. Much of it was not on established trail so lots of bushwhacking involved and climbing all kinds of obstacles. The toughest terrain of course came at night in the dark which also included a crazy scary cliff section. On paper the time cutoffs sound extremely generous and no problem even if you hike a lot however we quickly began to run out of time later in the race due to all these unusual challenges. We ended up stopping around 67-68 miles due to blister problems but we also were about 30 hours into the race. I can't even begin to explain everything that happened so I will post a link to my blog if you would like to read more info. Overall though, I did like it, it was awesome to experience completely different things than normal however there definitely needs to be changes which are already happening so I definitely recommend this race. In fact we will probably do it again in 2017 :-)

http://runningmarathonmom.blogspot.com/2016/09/jahorina-ultra-trail-bosnia.html