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Mike's RTW Trip 06/07
The Transalp Challenge 2006 was indeed a challenge. It's claimed to be the hardest mountain bike stage race and so far for me it is. Never before had I spent 2 hours climbing a mountain without any let-up.
I would love to say that I kept a diary of each day with wonderful antidotes and pearls of wisdom, but I did not. I was too knackered each day to even think about that. What follows is what I can remember of the race.
Before we had even left I realised that I had booked return flights from Turin to Gatwick. When doing some further checking I realised that Turin was about 300km away from Lake Garda and would probably cost us about the same in new flight tickets as it would in transport getting there. So I booked new tickets for Andy, Liz, Pips and myself. Great start already! I'm glad that the rest were that understanding.
So on the morning that we left the taxi arrives and it's a MPV. I had asked twice for a car that could take 4 people, 4 bike bags and extra luggage. Guess what? We did not fit. Luckily the taxi company had a small bus and was able to get it to us within 10 minutes. Whew! We managed to check in fairly quickly even if we had a combined total weight of about 160kg instead of 125kg. We did not have to pay anything extra. YAY! Everything else went without a hitch.
Arriving in Munich we were pleasantly surprised that we paid 25 Euros for 4 people to travel from Munich to Fussen, a 4 hour train journey. I wish the UK train travel was that cheap.
We spent 3 days in Fussen before the race started. Fussen is a lovely place. We did some cycling & swimming to acclimatise before the race. Also had to drink some German beer to make sure it was fresh. And then the race started.
The typical race day went like this:
• Get woken up at 05:30 with people already starting to pack up or go to breakfast.
• Cover your head and try to get some extra sleep until 06:30.
• Get up and go to the loo.
• Pack some of your bag
• Go to breakfast
• Try to force as much food down your throat while feeling nauseous.
• Get all your days kit sorted, change and pack final stuff
• Go to the loo
• Take your bag to the luggage racks
• Walk to the park ferme to get your bike
• Pray that all the tires are hard as you only have 30 minutes to the start
• Go stand in your starting pen
• Race starts and we all ride through the town trying to stay out of trouble.
• Start to climb the first mountain.
• Get to the feed station which had lots to eat and drink.
• Get passed by Europeans on the climbs
• Pass the Europeans on the descents
• Get to the end with a huge smile
• Find the last feed station and stuff your face with food and drink
• Meet Vik and then join him and Mark for a pizza in one of the restaurants.
• Find the bike wash and wash the bike down
• Find the Transalp camp
• Clean your bike
• Get your wash kit and go have a cold shower (every day)
• Wash your dirty clothes and find a place to hang them
• Have some free time to snack, chat to the other riders or get a catnap in
• Go to dinner which was always a pasta party
• Stuff as much food down your throat without throwing up
• Go to the loo
• Go back to the Transalp camp
• Get a 15 minute massage
• Go to bed
• Struggle to sleep the whole night
• Get woken up at 05:30
Overall it was a great race. All the climbing was tough, but the awesome descents and single track did make up for it. There were two English chaps that rode the whole race on their single speeds. Huge respect goes to these guys. YES the made it!
I seemed to have off and on days. Andy never had an off day. I thought you were supposed to get better endurance the older you got? What's going on here?
We had some awesome single-track sections. Andy and I flew down these and passed a lot of chaps that had passed us (read me) on the climbs. It made me feel a lot better. I must say all the training in Afan definitely paid off. Andy even paid me a huge compliment saying that on a number of sections he did not want to go any faster. YAY! We never had any rain throughout the race, which was really appreciated.
We only had one puncture each which did not really hold us back. Every day was very hot. One tarmac section was recorded at 45C. Andy and I rode a lot of days with Hanlie Booyens and Sharon Laws. They had won the ladies team race at the first Cape Epic and Hanlie came second at the last Transalp. They were not racing, just enjoying the ride. Whew! I had a brand new saddle at the start, which goes against all rules of riding. But my saddle never gave me any issues. I can definitely recommend the Fizzik Gobi saddle. It's awesome. We slept in sports halls each night. Basically they put 350 teams in a sports hall. There is a lot of snoring and other strange noises around. My worst image would be of a German cyclist sitting naked with his legs open applying cream to his bum. This was right at the doorway into the sport hall where everyone was walking by. LOVELY!
It was a good feeling to finish the race at Limone sul Garda after doing an 1800m descent.
There were a lot of people at the end and we spent most of the afternoon swimming and drinking beer. I felt pretty light headed by the time we went to find our bags and hotel. It was a good feeling to go fetch our bags from the Transalp camp and put them in our hotel.
Some of us spent another 4 days at Limone sul Garda and had a great time swimming in the lake and taking it easy. We did some sight-seeing, paddling and Andy had a wind-surf.
Now I'm back and looking forward to my next cycle challenge the TransRockies. I think a number of us are going to do it in 2008. But for now I am going to enjoy my year off and have an awesome time travelling around the world.
For those that are interested Andy and I finished 126th out of 300 men teams and 189th out of 525 teams overall. So we are happy with our result.
For those that want a challenge here is a link for next years race http://www.transalpchallenge.com/
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