This year one of my all-time favourite home-grown races, the Lionheart cross triathlon, celebrated its 10th anniversary, which is why it drew loads of strong competitors, especially in the three-person relays.
Not wanting to be outdone by the men, I put together an epic little team too. Its members were me on the run, Andrian Karparov on the bike and my mate Leo on the swim.
Andro needs no introduction – two wins in the Vitosha 100 duathlon, plus a win in this year’s Tarnovo Ultra duathlon, are just part of his portfolio. I get universal respect and practically a round of applause just by dropping, oh so casually, that he’s on my team.
You’ll say, Andrian is such a star, it must have been really hard to get him on the team… Well, no – Andro messaged me himself and offered to race together. Maybe he still finds it funny remembering our joint outing at Utopia in 2023, when he arrived on the bike so much earlier than expected that he got through 2 cigarettes while I came out of the loo and got myself together to enter the transition zone (total transition time around 5 minutes).
The challenge in putting our team together was getting Leo on board. Leo is a typical member of the Brotherhood of Thick-Skinned Rhinos – sorry, I meant Thick-Skinned Capricorns. He suffers from the pathology common to his star sign, namely – he defends himself with horns, teeth and hooves whenever anyone tries to drag him out of his comfort zone.
Leo’s comfort zone is narrow and consists of the following two activities: vigorously underlining passages from Nietzsche’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” with a biro, and listening to podcasts about Steve Jobs. In the 5% of his time not devoted to worshipping Nietzsche and Jobs, he is editor-in-chief of the super cool magazine “Stalbata” (https://stalbata.bg)
To talk him into taking part, I’ve prepared a few of his idols’ better-known quotes, such as “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” (so he’d find the strength to take part in an event with lots of people) or “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life” (a.k.a. those of Nietzsche or Jobs). But to my surprise, he not only embraced the idea of swimming 3 km in Perla Bay as part of a relay triathlon, but also started training seriously, regularly going to the sessions of Emo Stoynev, whom I’ve written about before.
The team is formed, but hard times lie ahead of it.
First, we’ll be up against much stronger teams in the three-person relays. Which in itself isn’t a problem at all, but with Andro on the team we’re making a very strong bid to be at least in the top 10, and why not the top 5, and it’ll be a shame if we don’t deliver. Night after night I break into a cold sweat at the thought of Andro handing over to me among the first, and on the way I get flattened by Miro Spasov, Vankata Andreev, Mitko Tsenov, Yani and a few more lads who started 45 minutes after me. It will all be in the natural order of things and the laws of nature, but it will still be very, very unpleasant for the team.
The other problem is that I’ve been suffering from plantar fasciitis all summer. It’s robbing me of the chance to prepare properly for the Berlin marathon, which is on 21.09 and will be, health permitting, my second major. I’ve got two weeks to go to the big event, and on top of missing 3 weeks of training, I haven’t done a single one of the two compulsory 30+ km runs.
I share these woes of mine with Militsa. She thinks and thinks and comes up with the following. On the day of Lionheart, I’ll do at least one of the “thirties”. I’ll run 20 km race pace and then another 10 easy.
Besides our little team’s imaginary battle with the big teams in the three-person relays – with the runners I mentioned, with swimmers like Palazov, Kateto Avramova, Gabi Georgieva and super strong cyclists – we also have a battle ahead with teams equal to us, at least on paper.
Such as my husband’s team, which, having beaten us at the triathlon in Batak, has smugly sharpened its teeth for my blood and stages psych attacks on me every other day. Among his favourite evergreens are “I’ll give you a 10-minute head start and still kick your backside on the run” and “my Sasho will crush your Lyubo on the swim” (apparently in Emo’s brain all male names starting with “L” are interchangeable). My husband isn’t shy about going after That-Sacred-Being Andro either, declaring that his cyclist is AT LEAST as good as him.
The last battle awaiting me at Lionheart is with myself. I want to have a good run. I want to run the course well.
“Running it well” in my head means doing it faster than myself last year. I’ve got some kind of bug in my head that makes me constantly race against last year’s me. The last-year Nia I was racing this weekend was healthy, in peak form, hadn’t missed a single training session, and did the course in 1:48.
So my goal for this year is sub-1:48. Of course, I’ve prepared plenty of excuses for myself in case I don’t make it. 3 months of plantar fasciitis, training missed against my will, a nasty stomach bug that left me completely dehydrated a week before Lionheart. Excuses, with me, as with all the other try-hards and hype-believers that most of us amateur runners are, you could shovel them up by the spadeful.
This trait of ours didn’t go unnoticed by Kateto, Ekaterina Avramova, an Olympic swimmer whom I met a bit later that same day and whom I’ll tell you about further down. After doing 3,000 metres in 42 minutes in open water, she wrapped herself in a towel and, munching wholegrain crackers, remarked thoughtfully:
“It’s really strange at this event – whoever I ask whether they’re ready, everyone covers themselves with ‘I’m ill, I’ve got a temperature of 38, I’m not prepared, I’m only doing it for fun, I’m injured.’ Who on earth is making you race injured????”
I decide not to show her the titles of many of our activities on Strava, which usually go: “Not bad for someone ill, injured, short on sleep and unprepared” (that one for a half marathon PB). Or “Just an easy one for fun, nice and chatty” with the heart rate data hidden, because – well, you know.
Not that I’m an exception, mind – I’ve bawled my plantar fasciitis to the whole world – but at least I keep some decency when it comes to the titles of my Strava activities.
The evening before the race, at dinner, a woman sits down next to me and we really hit it off. Her name is Darina and she told me how she got inspired to run by us, the Frontrunners. Well, that made me really happy, honestly. It turned out we had loads in common to talk about, and of course it came to me moaning to her about what awaited me the next day. Namely – my big fear of how Andro would hand over to me early and the speedsters would steamroll me on the course.
“It’s not easy psychologically to start with a big lead over, say, the Bulgarian marathon champion,” I took in, with a sweeping gesture, Miro Spasov, who was quietly eating at our table, “and to know that unless your lead is an hour, your team is done for. Even though the ones before you have done their bit as they should.”
“Is that the Bulgarian marathon champion over there?” Darina confirms that she’s new to running circles. I nod. How can she not know who Miro is…
“Well, I drove him here from Sofia. He was formal with me the whole way and didn’t once mention having any results whatsoever.”
Yet another reminder that the better someone is at something, the less they need to acquaint everyone around them with their personality and achievements. I admit that I will always find a way, with a stranger giving me a lift to the seaside, to steer the conversation round to some little success of mine, which is nowhere near as grand as Miro’s.
From my own observations, the hype-believer scale grades something like this (and I don’t exclude myself from it):
1/ at the beginning, when we can’t do anything yet – modest, we run only for health and pleasure and aren’t interested in results. Mainly – because we don’t have any.
2/ when we progress a bit, we enter the most irritating phase – “God save us from the blind man who’s just regained his sight”. Still not able to do anything, but able to do more than ourselves before, we become the most tiresome. Mediocrity, gravitating around 62–70% age grade, has given birth to the most wannabe coaches and self-proclaimed inspirers, motivators and critics of everyone else.
3/ whoever manages to progress for real calms down and becomes like Miro – eats his dinner and keeps quiet. The next day he sets a record of 1:15 on the Lionheart run. But few people get that far.
The next morning I get up in the dark to catch the swimmers’ start. It has always been my favourite moment of the race. The swimmers entering the calm mirror of the sea against the sunrise has always been a sight that both calms me and gives me hope that anything is possible for me too.
This day, though, like the one before, the sea isn’t calm. There are big waves.
Half an hour before the swim start I’ve organised a team briefing under the Red Bull arch.
First to arrive is Andro, in all the magnificent self-confidence of a man in possession of the perfect moustache, calf and brother-in-law. We’re waiting for Leo, so they can meet and know who’s handing the relay to whom from swim to bike.
Leo spills onto the beach with Kateto. He’s told me about her – that she’s a two-time Olympian and holds a whole heap of records for Bulgaria and Turkey. Kateto turns out to be completely in sync with my musings that the most successful athletes are the most down-to-earth, friendly and unpretentious.
I introduce Andro to Leo, anxiously raising the question of the waves with my swimmer. Andro and I had just agreed that we’d happily run a full marathon rather than dip ourselves in those waves, which looked monstrous to us. The words I’m afraid will fall from Leo’s lips are “All good”.
In Leo’s language “All good” means that nothing is good and he passionately longs to retreat home, underline quotes and post them on his stories. Thank God the waves turn out to be to his taste and don’t push him into uttering the code phrase.
The swim start is given. The sight is beautiful, inspiring and pumps life into me for a year ahead.
After about 40 minutes the first swimmers start coming out. I can’t not mention that 3 of the first 5 official triathlon participants out of the water were WOMEN!!! 60% of the top 5. 2nd woman and 4th overall, seconds after Palazov, Kateto comes out with a huge smile.
Recently I came across a quote by Thomas Hardy (apparently everyone on the team is into quotes) that struck me right in the heart:
“A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.”
Those words stung me, as I’ve often reproached myself for not starting to develop my talents in time and that, because at times I don’t believe in myself, I don’t leave the mark I could.
But the fact that women dominated among the fastest swimmers at Lionheart 2025 showed me that there are many strong women who don’t throw away their strength but channel it. That is a huge responsibility, both to yourself and to the world.
Leo comes out in 62 mins and is 22nd among the relays. Andro takes over – his ride can be described by this screenshot of the conversation between Emo and me as he makes his way along the course (we’re on rival teams):
He who laughs last laughs best. When Andro hands over to me we’re now the 7th relay, not the 22nd. And we’re way ahead of Emo’s team, not just a bit.
I shove the tracker into the back pocket of my ASICS Metarun shorts (a very handy pocket, right at the waist, snug-fitting, so you don’t feel the weight and bouncing of the tracker) and off I go.
The first important thing I have to do is not get lost at the turn-off before Maslen Nos. I pull this stunt almost every year and it has cost me anything from 40 seconds to disqualification. Luckily, this year they’ve put a person right there who points me to the right turn-off.
All that’s left is not to lose too much time on the two descents (one after Beglik Tash and the other down to the beach). At the Beglik Tash aid station I stop only briefly for water and electrolytes. My new friend Darina is volunteering there and fires me up: “Go on, Nia!”
I get through the descents somehow or other. I know that once I scramble my way to the big climb from the 12th to the 16th km, my problems on the course are over.
I really love climbing, and here the climbing, however steep it is, is mostly on an asphalt road. That means I’m in my element; my breathing settles into a rhythm and I feel so strong that for the first time in my 5 outings here, I don’t walk even on the trail part of the climb that comes after the asphalt.
My whole body is in rhythm now and I don’t even stop for water at the last aid station on Lavskata Glava. It feels easy, but I don’t look at my watch yet so as not to psych myself out. I’ve decided I’ll look at it just before I come out onto the final asphalt straight, which is somewhere between one and two kilometres.
When I get there I look at my watch – 1:37!!! Given that I was fighting against last-year Nia’s 1:48, I was already tasting my sweet victory.
In your face, last year me! Even hopping on one leg there was no way I’d take over 10 minutes for the rest of the course.
I finish in 1:45! I’m over the moon with myself. Three minutes off my own best is a big difference, and I’m not sure what to put it down to, given my troubles with plantar fasciitis all summer. I don’t have the kilometres I need in my legs; there’s no logical explanation. Maybe the fact that this year the weather was cool and perfect for running, unlike the crushing heat of previous editions, helped a lot with my good result. I feel just like this:
I head off to do my remaining 10 easy km, having first chirped happily to Emo that I’m super pleased with my run. Diplomatically, I don’t mention that my relay is 6th and his twenty-something, so as not to wind him up. But he’s wound up anyway – “What are you so hyped about, like you’ve won the World Mountain Running Championships!” – my husband reacts, macho-style. I shoot him a withering look before setting off for my cool-down.
I run the cool-down at a pace of 7, which gives Emo more than enough time to undergo an inner metamorphosis and rise above himself as a person. When I get back, we go for ice cream, at which point he overcomes everything Balkan in himself and admits to me, in a voice gurgling in his throat:
“Niyka, well done, you had a really good run today!”
These are the kinds of miracles that happened to me at the anniversary edition of Lionheart:
-there were more women than men in the top five of the swim
-I met another Olympian
-Emo praised a run of mine
-I had a strong run for my abilities, despite my insufficient preparation.
Keep your fingers crossed for me that this run of miracles continues for me in Berlin too, where on the 21st I’ll be running a full marathon.
