Ghost Riders

No running today...  I ran enough yesterday as I competed in the 39km Ciucas Trail Marathon race. I will write about the marathon next days. So today I did a short recovery walk on the hills near Brasov. On the route I took photos of competitors in the On The Rocks mountain bike race. The race was a long 12km downhill from Postavarul Mountain to Brasov, with almost 1200m of altitude drop. It was the first edition of this contest on this route.

When I first heard about this contest I was quite worried, as it took place along some popular hiking trails. I am happy to report that the organisers did a very good job in keeping the safety standards high. Posters on the trees along the route announced the race 2-3 weeks in advance. On the day of the race, there were many volunteers along the route so any hiker could be warned. In the end the day was quite cold and cloudy so there were just a few hikers in the area. The race had a mass start so the whole event was a quick one causing minimal disruption along the trail.

As the sky was overcast, the forest was quite dark; not ideal conditions for taking action photos. So I experimented with panning and relatively long exposure times. I got a few very interesting photos, more on the 'artistic' side of photography. However, the majority of the photos will disappoint the racers as they are really shaky and blurry... Even so, I kept at least one photo of each biker and posted them on Picassa Web Albums. Here are some of the best photos of the day: