Marko Baloh not only wrote a book about cycling, but he wrote down his life.

And I wouldn't be surprised if with words printed on paper, he wouldn't change someone else's life, too.

From the narration by Primoz Kalisnik.

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The beginning of my sporting career is probably quite different from what you might think. Not that I didn't like sports as a child, I tried a number of sports from gymnastic, footbal (soccer), table tenis and karate, but I didn't show much talent for any of those sports. That is until I sat on the bike! It was pretty late at the age of 17, but I felt right away that this was it. Still, nobody would have believed at that time that this guy would do something in cycling, let alone setting the World Records and winning World Championships...

It was a love at first sight. I have done some longer rides before joining my first cycling club (like riding from my grandma's house in velenje to our home in Ljubljana - 85km for which I needed the whole 6 hours;). Even though the start in racing was hard at first, my hunger for testing the limits of my capabilities started growing inside of me. Bike gave me the new found confidence, as for the first time in my life (outside of school) I felt that nobody can match me. When I sat on my bike, my shyness dissapeared and I became a new Marko. I was never a serial winner as I was not a good sprinter, but with my power I decided lots of races helping my teammates to victories.

With my career as road racer was nearing the end, my wish to test myself at RAAM started growing. Since the day I found out about it (in the early 90s), I felt that this was a race made for me. Even though it was not possible to do it during my career (because of other racing commitments), a dream burned in me.

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RAAM

Race across America in a unique  extreme endurance cycling race in which you have to cycle from West to East Coast of USA the fastest you can, without ever stopping the stopwatch. RAAM is around 3000 miles long race that takes place every summer from 1982 when four enthusiasts decided to race from Santa Monica to New York. The first race was called Great American Bike Race (GABR), but the next year they renamed it to RAAM. THe four pioneers of RAAM were: Lon Haldeman (the winner of first two editions), John Howard, Michael Shermer and John Marino. What started as a strange idea of four friends, became the biggest endurance cycle race on the planet. In 1993 the Outside Magazine gathered a group of experts to declare which is the hardest sporting event in the World. With the factors li ethe “Mule Factor”-the distances involved; the ”Forum”-how tough the course is; the “Anguish Index”-how hard the competitors “have to work to convince themselves that what they’re doing is only mildly inane and self-destructive;” and the “O Factor”-a combination of the cost to do the event and the drop out rate, the jury decided RAAM was the most difficult one, "winning" over Vendee Globe Around-the-World Sailing Race and Iditarod Sled Dog Race. In the first 8 most difficult sporting events were also Badwater marath through Death Valley and Hawaian Ironman Triathlon.

From year 2000, when I first set the RAAM qualification, I raced RAAM nine times - eight times as solo competitor (2003, 2005, 2006, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2016 and 2017) and once in a two-person team with Tomaz Percic (2008).

EVERYTHING ABOUT RAAM

Theodore Roosevelt: