Churches, bridges and soviet architecture: the Sofia Marathon

Sofia Marathon. October 2022. Sofia, Bulgaria.

We ran in a city where everything is possible and almost everything is peculiar.

Here you find Orthodox churches, Catholic cathedrals, mosques and synagogues sharing a square, bridges with lions and bridges with eagles that were bombed in different wars.

In October, the Sofia Marathon takes you from an impressive congregation of state buildings to endless boulevards lined with ex-Soviet skyscrapers.

TDLR

• I just want to run! Take me to RACE.
• I have 1 minute. Take me to USEFUL INFORMATION.
• Running is my excuse for travelling. Take me to TRIP.
• Running is my excuse for eating. Take me to CARBOLOADING.
• I want to know what to read in the plane. Take me to ONE BOOK.

🌍 The Trip 📷: What to see in Sofia in one day

Getting to Sofia from Barcelona was easy, since there is a direct flight of just over three hours. Although, at an ungodly hour 😴… We left on a Friday night and upon arriving we sensed in the deep night some of the monuments and historical buildings that we wanted to see the day after.

On Saturday, we visited Sofia without hurrying too much. We didn’t want to get too tired as we were running the day after. The center of Sofia is easy to navigate on foot. We started with the famous St. Alexander Nevski Cathedral, obviously:

Afterwards, we visited the Square of religious tolerance, so called because here there are an Orthodox church, a mosque, a synagogue and a Catholic cathedral!

We contemplated the beautiful Ivan Vasov theater, and later a square where three buildings are located which make you feel like you are in a novel by John Lecarré. The House of the Party, the National Assembly of Bulgaria and the Council of Ministers:

In case you are curious, here is a list of government buildings in Sofia!

We walked a little further to see the National Palace of Culture, the NDK:

And we also marveled at the Sveta-Nedelya Cathedral:

Finally, we got to see a very impresssive display of soldiers in front of numerous official buildings, changing guard or receiving foreign politicians:

📅 The Marathon Expo 🎽

The “marathon expo”, where one could collect the race numbers and the runner’s bag, was located near the impressive church of Saint Alexander Nevsky, the most iconic in the city. Kudos to the organization!

The “marathon expo” was not big: it was a tent with a display of sports watches and isotonic drinks, and the desks for the collection of numbers for the three races, the marathon, the half and the 10 kilometers.

The girls who attended us joked about the pronunciation of our names: there didn’t seem to be many foreigners running!!

Something I found strange is that t-shirts were unisex: the same for men and women.

Also near the “marathon expo” was the Knyazheska Garden and the monument to the Soviet army, a very reduced version of the Russian monuments that we had seen in Volgograd, the old Stalingrad, during other trip. That is: very strong communist soldiers crowded together, one lifting a baby and a peasant woman next to him. All amongst empty spaces, endless stairs and flower beds.

Here there was also some graffiti that we did not understand, but from whose angry lines we guessed that the author wasn’t particularly happy with the epic tribute to the Soviet army…

🏃‍♀️ The Race 🏃‍♂️

Starting line

The starting line was located in a very well chosen location: in front of the National Gallery of Art, right in the city center.

We stretched in front of the beautiful Russian Orthodox church that is located a few meters away, Saint Nikolas Russian Church (Tsurkva Sveta Nikolai), dedicated to Saint Nikolas, “the miracle worker”. Warming up in front of its golden domes and elaborate mosaics was quite cool! And, of course, we asked for a good time as our particular “miracle” 😆

Also at the starting line we enjoyed the curiously disparate nature of the city: among monumental buildings (with the Bulgarian flag everywhere) there were overweight runners doing the “triangle pose” (Yoga) and others who seemed perfect to play villains in one of the many American movies with strong hitmans that use Sofia as a setting.

“The hitman” (here a video about it) “London has fallen” and even “the Expendables” have used Sofia scenarios!

The sun lengthened our shadows, and the temperature was close to 20 degrees, so we ran in short sleeves.

Furthermore, the race was not overcrowded: we were about a thousand or so runners, about eight hundred men and about three hundred women (with men’s t-shirts 🙂).

The race

With such conditions, ideal for running, we set off at 9 am.

A spectator encouraged us with a friendly sign in English: “You are running better than our government”, and a little further away another dressed as Jesus, complete with tunic and long straight hair.

The circuit is quite flat, although on the bridges there are the logical slopes up and down.

At first you run through the city center, a positive point for the organization: it gives you the opportunity to do what I call “tourism at five and a half kilometers”: we saw the churches of the three religions and even the Nevsky Cathedral itself.

At kilometer 3, we grabbed a bottle of water, surprised that there was a refreshment station so soon… only to realize later that we had made a mistake, since the stop was preparing for kilometer 25 of the marathon!

After mentally apologizing to the long-suffering long-distance runners, we continued at a good pace.

The second part runs through the ex-Soviet neighborhoods and very long boulevards that looked like a mix between Barcelona’s Ronda del Litoral and the national 340. There were many blocks of gray and nondescript apartments, pure Soviet architecture.

Another anecdote from the race was when I saw an elderly woman hanging clothes on a tiny balcony while she paid zero attention to all of us runners.

It ends in the center, with many people in the streets cheering and a festive and pleasant atmosphere.

After crossing the finish line, we found cookies, bananas, magnesium preparations and other snacks, but… where were the medals?

Apparently, due to a logistical failure, they had not arrived. They would never reach the foreign runners.

P.D.

Thanks to bulgarian fellow runner, more than a year after, we got the medal! One day in a online meeting at work with a software company based in Sofia, I mentioned the anecdote about the medals… and one of their executives, Kostadin (who himself had run the race), got us one. Incredible!

Many thanks Kostadin!

🍜 Carboloading and Protein Recovery 🍝

For Carboloading, I recommend any of the restaurants in Vitosha Boulevard (that is what we did): many of them offer carbohydrate-rich traditional Bulgarian dishes.

And, after the race, we couldn’t hang a medal around our necks, but we could recover some protein.

We ate a couple of very impressive Bulgarian steaks in a restaurant just a few meters from the finish line: “Urban legends Steak and Fish house“. Or should I say, “legendary” steaks?

We enjoyed our steakes with foie and truffle sauce and a couple of homemade mango lemonades while we watched through the window the runners who had finished the marathon passing by, with the typical imprisoned gait and grimaces of pain.

🏆 Sofia Marathon (42K, 21K and 10K)

🌐 Website: https://www.marathonsofia.com

🗓️ October in Sofia, in Bulgaria, Europe.

👟 Urban: bring shoes for asphalt.

✅ Start and finish in the city center and possibility of seeing highlights of Sofia while running.

✅ Manageable number of runners (<5000) and course which is reasonably flat.

❌The medals did not arrive on time and we left Sofia without, however, see P.D.