Sfakia Sky Marathon Stories:
1. Amazing start.

Sfakia Sky is an exceptional competition, right from the start. Or rather, even before the start. We gather in the town of Chora Sfakion, which is not where we start running. The starting point – Loutro – is a village that has no connection with the world by any asphalt road (or any road at all). You can only get there by a narrow path along the shore of the Libyan Sea or by ferry. So we take the ferry. Before that, you can still pick up your starting number at the port (although it is better to do it the day before, the race office is also open on Friday evening in Anopoli).

On October 26, in the southern part of Crete, the sun rises at 7:39, so when we board the ferry (at 7:30 a.m.) it is still quite dark. And during this short journey, the day is born. It is only 30 minutes, but we slowly see how it is getting brighter and brighter. On the left side, the horizon line slowly emerges from total darkness somewhere between the sea and the sky, and if the air is clear, we have a chance to see Gavdos in the distance – the southernmost island in Europe. However, it is much more interesting on the right side of our sea vehicle. The ferry sails exceptionally close to the shore, at first you can see almost nothing, then slowly the outlines of the land emerge, or rather the outlines of the mountains, rising in this place directly from the sea. It is grey, but as soon as the sun appears, the colours are filled. However, these are not any shades of green or white, nothing grows on these coastal slopes, there are no villages there, not even individual houses. We are in Crete, the dominant colour is intense red turning into burgundy. The view is amazing, not so much lunar (this will be higher and later) as Martian. The combination of bare rock walls with a high iron content and the rising sun creates this incredible impression of red. Amazing also because it is partly fleeting. When we reach the shore in Loutro, our local star is already a little higher above the horizon, it is completely bright, and the colors of the surrounding rocks become more yellow-red than burgundy.

White also appears, because all the houses in Loutro are white. The village is located in a semicircle above a bay protected from the western winds. The terrain rises steeply upwards, so the whole thing resembles a large amphitheater, with the sea in the middle, a strip of beach around it and the main street right next to it. A “street” is not really the best description; around the beach there are simply taverns and cafes, flowing smoothly into each other, but there is enough space between the tables to walk or run. Run, because this is also the beginning of our route.

The ferry arrives at the dock in the western part of Loutro. We go ashore, do the necessary warm-up or talk to whoever we can and… back to the ferry! The start of the Sfakia Sky Marathon (and the Sfakia Vertical the following day) takes place exactly from the ferry, so from sea level (well, maybe 1 meter above sea level). As you can easily guess, the first 300 are on flat ground. We run along a promenade that is somewhat deserted at the very end of the season, among the cafes that are slowly closing, with a view of the increasingly blue Libyan Sea and the small island of Fanari protecting the port of Loutro from the west, and we think that this may be the only perfectly flat section of our race. Right after the left turn, everything changes. The first uphill section on the route begins…

to be continued

Click on the picture – you will find a larger description.