It takes just half an hour by car to get to Kalafat, a mountain on the edge of Niš. On Sunday, 18 October, the first race of the Jug Trail series was run there, on a trail that volunteers of the Running Club Niš had cleaned and marked a month earlier, in a joint action with Europe House Niš.
The trail is part of the Niš Transversal and the European walking route E7. This route begins at the border between Portugal and Spain and reaches Serbia through Andorra, France, Italy, Slovenia and Hungary. Near Niš it descends via Kamenički Vis, Dabil, the village of Kamenica and Čegar to the Niš Fortress. It belongs to a network of European walking routes that totals more than 55,000 kilometres. The cleaning and marking of the trail took place in September, during European Mobility Week.
Runners took on two trails, five and twenty kilometres long, and more than a hundred people lined up at the start. Filip Jovanović, president of the Running Club Niš, explains why the first race was set exactly here.
“As the Running Club Niš we decided to organise this race near Niš, symbolically, as a club based primarily in Niš, to start a story that will begin from here, from the south of Serbia”, says Jovanović.
The turnout, he says, was bigger than expected.
“It is a good indicator that people are interested and that there is a need, considering that this is the only mountain race in Niš this year”, says Jovanović.
He sees the proximity of the city as part of the reason so many people came, but also as a chance to show what Niš has in its immediate surroundings.
“It is important that this race is very close to the city itself, you get here in about ten minutes by car. Besides sport and healthy recreation, which is our focus, there is also beautiful nature that we should all promote and nurture together”, says Jovanović.
In the women’s twenty-kilometre race, the winner was Ljiljana Krasić, for whom Kalafat is home ground, where she regularly trains. She has been a member of the Serbian national team since last year and is winning gold in the masters category for the second year in a row. What pleased her most on Kalafat, she says, was that so many young people came.
“It is never too late to start running and it is never too late to achieve results”, says Krasić.
The first race is the prelude to the Jug Trail series, which will be held on several trails in the south of Serbia in 2027. The trail stays marked after the race, so you can walk it on foot any day.