Two years ago I took part in my first relay triathlon – “Utopia Lionheart”, covering two legs – the swim and the run. For those unfamiliar with triathlon – it’s a sport made up of three disciplines in the following order: swimming, cycling and running. Normally all three are done by one athlete, but at amateur races it can be done as a relay by two, or even three participants. At that first outing of mine, back in 2023, I was on a team with a beast of a cyclist, Andrian Karparov. I swam and ran, and he carried the team on his back with some very strong cycling, all the way to second place among the two-person relays.
Apart from a debut podium, that race brought me enormous happiness, mainly because I had tried something new for me – swimming.
I had got the urge to learn to swim two years before that, at the age of 41, inspired by this beautiful (and, seen from a distance – oh, so deceptively calm) sight of the swimmers at Lionheart.
I turned 43, learnt to swim and recklessly signed up for the 2023 race. I was not prepared at all for what was going to happen to me in the water. Open water is nothing like the tidy lanes of a pool. The swimmers are packed so tightly that the only thing I can compare it to is the struggle of the elements in the boiling primordial soup from which life emerged. During my first open-water swim two years ago, I never even got as far as swimming front crawl. As I went in, the bubbling mass of human bodies swept me away and flung me in its own direction of travel, and under my goggles, fogged up with fear, I couldn’t see a single thing. Panic had taken over the controls of my body; I lost control not only of my breathing but of my movements in general. I made it back with a combination of every stroke there is, with the main emphasis on “doggy paddle”, and as I crawled out onto the shore, I gave thanks for my survival and promised myself “Never again”.
And of course – here I am again, two years later. This time, though, prepared. To avoid the shock of 2023, I decided to put my trust in a professional swimming coach.
How did I meet my coach, you ask? I suppose the same way as many others like me – by crashing head-on into him in the 50-metre pool at Spartak. The man’s name is Emo Stoynev, and he isn’t shy about getting to know random people in the pool through comradely criticism. In my case the first meeting went like this: I was swimming along, doing drills with paddles that a friend had recommended to me. When I swim I usually can’t hear much or see much, because of the obligatory kit of cap and goggles. But the stern but fair baritone of my future coach managed to break through their soundproofing:
“Oi, you, the track-and-field girl!”
(Me, at the starting position for the next length, turning round just in case, even though I don’t think he means me)
“Yes, you, I’m talking to you, what are you looking around for? Get those paddles off right now. You can’t do anything as it is, and they’re only making it worse.”
Since he has a good heart, he thought it over and softened the sentence:
“I’m telling you this because I can see that, if nothing else, at least you want to learn to swim.”
I remembered the man. Several times, walking into Spartak, I saw him chatting with people I knew and with friends, so I asked them about him. All of them recommended him unconditionally. Clearly he was a big name in those circles.
I had 2 months left until the Utopia Lionheart race. I started going to Stoynev twice a week. Nowhere near enough, I know, but still – better than nothing.
The sessions with Emo, although at first super exhausting for me (with him my warm-up is longer than my entire workout used to be before I met him), actually turned out to be extremely useful. On the one hand, you really do need someone there with you to correct your technique. On the other, his very presence motivated me to finish the session properly, instead of getting out after the first 1000 m with the feeling of having more than done my sporting duty, as I do when I’m on my own.
And when I’m with him, I also feel protected. He sweeps away, with great gusto, assorted obstacles on my road to success, such as misguided citizens swimming not for competitive but for recreational purposes. He calls them by the code name “jellyfish”, and again, without the slightest embarrassment, lies in wait for them at the end of the lane to explain the rules of the pool to them. Namely – that people at their pace must be ready at any moment to stop bobbing about, to roll themselves out like the finest pastry and press themselves flat against the side of the lane, so as not to get in the way of the pace of the “serious competitors”.
He is also a master of communication. It has happened that the eternal struggle for sporting supremacy between me and Emo has spilled over in the pool, right in front of him. On those occasions he has taken a strategic approach, letting each side hear what it needs to hear.
An example. Emo and I are getting out of the pool, having swum and raced each other in the same lane, despite the explicit ban on any competitive element in the family training session. Stoynev restores order with the wisdom of Solomon. First he calls Emo over.
“Emo, why do these women strain themselves so much, eh? Where do they think they’re going, eh, where do they think they’re going…. Mine at home, she’s always straining for something too… but that’s women for you, we have to accept them, after all, they are…..” – with an inner-male wink, he silently finishes the sentence – “a necessary evil”.
Having calmed Emo down, Stoynev turns to me:
“My girl, why are you racing people who are on a different level from you?” He doesn’t say whose level is the higher one, but with a meaningful look he manages to make me believe that it’s mine. “Just swim your own swim over there and don’t get distracted. Every frog should know its own pond.”
Trained by Emo Stoynev, I really do feel advanced in my swimming, and I’m looking forward to Utopia, 2025 edition. This time my cyclist will be my friend Kircho. My hopes of taking a full part in the race, however, are clouded by an injury that took away my ability to run, 2 weeks before the triathlon relay.
A painful inflammation in my heel, probably plantar fasciitis, forced me to stop all running for 10 days, and after that I could barely manage a timid, very gentle jog over minimal distances, with a rest day in between. Clearly I won’t have any running form for Utopia, but at least I hope I’ll be able to get round the course gently without it aggravating the inflammation.
What worries me, though, is something worse – that I might go and push hard, under the influence of a temporarily good placing, for example. I simply can’t picture it: Kiro and me running second, hypothetically, of course, among the two-person relays, the final standings hanging on my run, and me jogging gently.
I know myself, and I know I’m not that spiritually enlightened. I’ll push to the max, in the name of the prize pool of an amateur race. After all, grabbing a set of a buff, socks and a soft water bottle, in my eyes, fully justifies the sacrifice of staying on the sidelines for another month. And on top of that, I’ll do it with a sense of more than fulfilled duty, pouring out motivational status updates about “all or nothing in the name of the big goal”.
Kircho, the calmest person on planet Earth, assured me that no such chance exists. He wants to ride for fun – and that, combined with my swimming, will definitely knock us out of any position for a higher placing.
At the start of the swim, under the start arch in Chengene Skele bay, we bump into Geri from the Frontrunners.
She is one of the few, 45 women in total, who have dared to take on the full triathlon, and she also has a second place in her age group from last year to defend. Which, at that point, she doesn’t know she will not only defend, but do so with an improved time.
The expectations you have of yourself weigh heavy, I know that from my own experience. I’ll describe her over-strung emotional state before the start with the following line of hers:
“Of all the places, he had to come and BANG right here?”
It was hissed through her perfect teeth at this most well-meaning little man, who was conscientiously doing his job of raising the competitors’ spirits.
I know how Geri feels. Usually the countdown to the start ties my stomach into a bow of convulsions too, and every creature that moves gets on my nerves, let alone a creature beating a drum. But not this time. I’m calm. I know that thanks to Emo Stoynev I’m physically far better prepared than at my last race two years ago.
Well, it turned out I shouldn’t have been calm. Physically I was in better shape, but mentally, once again, I wasn’t ready. Last time there were 100 swimmers, and now – over 400. Last time I deliberately started among the last ones, where the density of human flesh per square metre of water is as low as it gets.
This time, with my self-confidence boosted – I do train with Stoynev, after all – I positioned a protesting Geri (we had no business being there, she protested, pulling back – had I lost my mind?) for a start from the front rows. The situation was roughly Grablev, Palazov, Ivo Tsonev on the front line, and Geri and me right behind them on the second. The other 400 people behind us could sort themselves out as best they could. Since there’s no chip time, we’ll save on gun time. That’s how we big players roll…
Here we are somewhere, Geri and me – right at the very front…..
We cheerfully counted down from 10 to 1, and calmly and full of confidence I entered what can only be described as the Cauldron of Hell.
Going into the water ahead of swimmers much faster than you, who catch up with you and overtake you in waves, practically ripping you in half, is like going through a mincer of diligently working human limbs. Only Gerka Perka and I know what we went through. Somewhere in the hullabaloo I last saw her head abruptly disappear under the boiling water, but however responsible I feel for her, at one point my own survival took a higher priority than being Caring-Captain.
Bear in mind that I have no experience of taking a beating in open water. I have no experience of taking a beating even in the pool. I come from the almost laboratory-sterile environment of Spartak, where Emo Stoynev protects his pupils even from the meek and well-meaning “jellyfish”, whom he has trained to clear the way for me.
While I was clinging like a mussel to the first buoy, trying to find a gap so that I too could get through the narrow corridor formed between the human bodies, through which swimmers were still trickling forward, I thought of Stoynev.
Here we are, all turning round the buoy together….
How nice it would have been if he were here to tell off all those who were compromising his athlete’s pace by slapping and splashing around her and along the whole length of her body…. A new goal took clear shape in my mind – for Emo Stoynev to teach me not only to swim, but also to fight the other swimmers for my territory in open water.
I somehow battered my way round the buoy, but just like last time, panic began to take over. The sight of hundreds of people flapping about in the water around me wasn’t doing me any good; clearly I’m not as sociable in the water as I am on dry land. So as not to see the huge crowd around me, I turned over to swim on my back for 2-3 minutes.
All that was left before my eyes was the bright, clear sky. It cleared my mind and I got my calm back…… All I could hear was the beating of my own heart, all I could see was the peaceful blue above me, and I felt in shape again. I didn’t even feel the other swimmers bashing into me…. aaaah, life, hello, hello…
When I felt mentally strong enough again to carry on with front crawl, I turned onto my stomach, only to discover that I was all on my own in the middle of the open water. While I had been calming my thoughts, swimming on my back and gazing at the sky, I had shot off out to sea, instead of making the next left turn and heading for the shore.
I’m notorious for my ability to get lost at races, but when running I at least have a logical excuse. At races I usually run alone, and if there’s an unmarked fork, it’s normal to get lost. But to get lost at sea, when the water around you is boiling and seething with people, and the buoy markings are visible from a helicopter… that’s a new level of lack of orientation, which I can proudly add to my CV as an amateur athlete.
At least I had space around me to start swimming front crawl. After I had merged back into the by now thinned-out column of swimmers, I managed to get something like a rhythm going. The lessons with Stoynev had built some kind of routine in me, which, once the panic inside me had settled, took over the controls of my body. I remembered the proverbial question from Ivo Andreev of the running podcast: “What matters more in a race – the mental side or the physical?”
I have always maintained that you can finish a race on mental strength alone, but to finish it with a good result for your abilities, you’ll need physical preparation. And to finish it with an excellent result for your abilities – a combination of mental strength and physical strength.
Here I saw that my physical preparation won out over my panic and managed to slot my body into the routine already built. Two years ago I had no physical routine to lean on when I panicked.
The second lap I swam entirely in front crawl, as it should be done. By now the swimmers around me had thinned out considerably too.
Just crawled out of the primordial soup, I felt like a proper link in evolution..
I came out of the water more than 5 minutes faster than last time, and I can honestly say I’m proud of my result.
A friend of mine, who can swim very well, told me there was nothing to be proud of in a 2:17 pace over 1500m. Now; I know that if we translate the pace into runner-speak, it would be something along the lines of a 5 km at 6:00 pace.
But we all start somewhere. Better this than not starting at all. I’m glad I’ve made great progress since before, and I’m even gladder that I still have plenty of room for progress ahead of me.
With the swim, the most exciting part of the race for me was over. I want to give special thanks to my Frontrunner family. To Zlati, who lent me her wetsuit, and to Hrisi and Emo, who cheered us on. Especially to Emko, who filmed my deep sighs as I waded into the bay for round two.
Kiro took over on the bike and, despite a delay of over 6 minutes due to technical problems with it, still rode well and had fun. Here he is:
After the handover from bike to run, I carried on gently, protecting my heel the whole way. I missed that feeling of satisfaction when you cross the finish arch knowing you ran hard and contributed to the team’s good performance.
But considering the circumstances, everything worked out in the best possible way. After the run I had no problems at all with my heel. This week I’m planning to ease back into structured training little by little. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
When God, or whoever is up there, was creating the earth, it was no accident that He chose for our planet to be shaped like a ball. Not a baking tray, not a cuboid, but a ball. Because that way, at any given moment, every person, standing at whatever point on the globe, has every right to think that they are the Centre-of-the-World.
Each of us is the centre of our own world, pursuing our own interests and achieving our own goals, however small and pointless they may seem to everyone else.
My goals and interests are to grow and to make progress in the activities that interest me and give me the push to wake up in the morning with an appetite for life. Among them are running on the dry land of said globe, and after Utopia – swimming in its waters too. In which Emo Stoynev has promised to teach me not only to take a beating with dignity, but to hand them out myself. We’ve already discussed everything and the plan is drawn up.
P.S. Kircho, brace yourself, because that was just the warm-up for team “Raw Country Muscle”. The main act will be at Momchil’s TRI Legends race in Batak, God willing, next month.
Photos: KrisoK Photography, Yanne Golev, Elena Karailieva, Bobo Kamilov,
