Leonidasz naplója: 2015. október 18. (210. nap)

I hadn't done any mentionable sport activity for more than 1,5 month and this bad tendency must have been stopped. That's why I decided to take a challange, actually the one which is the closest to Nyíregyháza: Tokaj hill. But this was not the only reason. On one hand I wanted to test myself how fast I can go up there from Tarcal, from time to time this is quite interesting, on the other hand I wanted to prepare myself a bit for next Friday when I will go from Miskolc to Mátraszentimre, a bigger challange on one of the most beautiful bicycle tracks in Hungary. (If I manage to ride there you can surely read few words about it here.)

I started early because I didn't want to afford to whole day for such a small thing. The way to Tokaj was foggy, but calm, and I arrived there in the earliest possible time to find the coffee open, this was a good though not very intentional synchronisation. After the coffein push it was more easy to ride futher on to Tarcal. From this part of the road you can normally have a nice view on the hill but this time there was only one short minute when the hill presented itself among the clouds, all the other time the clouds stayed dominant and relentlessly covered the summit.

I arrived at the bottom of the uphill session in good rythm but I knew that it didn't mean anything. This uphhill sesssion is 5,7 km long and there is an elevation gain of exactly 400 m between its start and its end, so it is rather tough, a big part of it is steeper than 10%. As I wrote yeterday, I wanted to do it in less than 40 minutes though I was cautious enough not to say how much less. My best time is around 36 mins, but this seemed illusorique after 1,5 month rest, but 38-39 mins appeared to be a realist objective in my mind.

Actually it went a bit slower, and finally I needed 39:15 time for the ascend. I am not very proud of it, but life is life and there are sometimes small gaps between our wishes and what we can really achieve, this was a typical example for that sort of cases. As for the panorama from above I could not enjoy anything of it, since the fog was still thick, but from the top of the ski track which is a little lower than the summit, I could see already few things in the valley.

On my way back I stopped once to take another photo since the cloud finally disappeared and I also stopped at Tokaj to visit a photo gallery where two of my collegues (a couple) exhibited too. The photos were nice, the town on the bank of the two rivers Tisza and Bodrog was the usual charming (though the weather was more chilly than few months ago) so my aesthetic needs were satisfied by the cultural experiences I managed to collect. The way back to Nyíregyháza was not the most easy ever, I don't know from where the wind blew exactly, just one thing is sure, not from behind. But it was still OK, the speed loss due to that stayed really tolerable.

Epilogue:

Upon my arrival back to home I opened the frige and seeing a bottle of Kilkenny which I bought few weeks before I said to myself very proudly: what a clever guy I am that I bought that beer! And not more than few minutes later I had to say to myself in a little bit different tone: what a stupid guy I am that I didn't buy at least two!