At first, I wanted to open this year's running season with a foreign start, but it was postponed to February, so I decided to look for something interesting among Ukrainian races. As January is not a busy month in terms of running starts, it was planned to hold three races on the territory of Ukraine. On January 30 there were two trails (trail "In Search of Yeti" and Christmas trail "Shchedryk"), and on January 31 cross-country race (Christmas Race).

Since the trail races started on January 30, we decided to start the running season of the future from which trail. He decided to focus on the Christmas trail "Shchedryk", which will take place in the town of Kremenets, Ternopil region.

Registration

Registration for the Christmas trail "Shchedryk" took place on the site runstyle.net, where trail participants could choose to run one of the two distances of 20 or 10 kilometers.

The trail route turned out to be quite interesting, as it passed mainly through the Kremenets Mountains and partly through the streets of Kremenets.

Run

My trip to Kremenets started on Friday night. It was possible to get from Kyiv to Kremenets only by bus because there is no direct railway connection from Kyiv to Kremenets. Therefore, after freezing for 7 hours on the bus, remembering Ukrzaliznytsia and its presentation of golden cars in a country where there is no normal railway connection between the cities, he managed to get to Kremenets.

Arriving in the morning in Kremenets, I went through the snow-covered streets of the city in the direction of the center of leisure "Panorama", and at the same time the starting point, as it was located in the center. Which turned out to be quite convenient, as before the race you could rest a bit from the road.

The delivery of starter packs to the participants of the Shchedryk trail started at 9:30 in the building of the center, where at the same time storage rooms and changing rooms for runners were installed.

After a short briefing from the organizers at 11 o'clock, the participants of the trail "Shchedryk" went in search of adventure through the snow-covered territory of the Kremenets Mountains.

The route of the trail "Shchedryk" passed in one circle on the snow-covered trails of the Kremenets Mountains with many different descents and ascents, where the trail participants were waiting to conquer three small peaks (Bona, Chernecha, and Volovytsia) from which beautiful panoramas of the city and its surroundings. In addition, the route had 2 food outlets with delicious tea and various delicacies, the first such point was organized on Mount Bona, and the other was waiting for the participants of the trail 3 kilometers before the finish.

In addition to an interesting snow-covered route, the participants of the trail also had a walk through the ruins of Kremenets Castle, which are located on top of Mount Bona.

Although the trail route was quite well marked, the trail is not so fun, if you do not get lost during it. It happened during the trail "Shchedryk" when at the next turn between me and the route of the trail "ran a black cat". So realizing that something was wrong, I had to go back in parallel looking for a place where I missed the markings. Returning to the route of the trail "Shchedryk" adventures in Kremenets peas continued, as ahead, still waiting for a lot of ups and downs that had to be overcome.

Running adventures in the Kremenets Mountains ended 2 hours and 39 minutes after the start, leaving only good memories after crossing the finish line.

Thank you for reading, I hope you found it interesting.

If you have any thoughts or opinions on this article then I'd love to see your comments.

You can find out more about long-distance races on my blog