SlickRock

TransAlp

Mittenwald to Riva Del Garda - 600km

19th - 26th July 2003

I'm writing this in the winter of 2009 over 6 years after Carl and I did our first and only TransAlp race. Flushed with success in the 2000 Grand Raid Cristalp we decided to try our hand at something a little longer and the 8 day stage race through Germany, Austria and Italy seemed to fit the bill. I'm not sure who came up with the idea but our entry was accepted in January and I suppose we must have thought about doing some training. In fact I remember Carl taking his training quite seriously, he embarked on a series of randonees each one increasing in distance until I think he was riding several hundred miles continuously. Lord knows what I was doing, probably shuttling up and down the longest climbs I could find in the Surrey hills. However, as with all great plans, there was a flaw in Carl's process which only became exposed by the huge miles he was doing. If I remember correctly he had purchased a pair of carbon soled shoes for riding in, ordinarilly not an issue but these shoes were to play a key part in our fate.

As part of the race entry fee you could elect to pay extra and your accommodation would be provided courtesy of the organisers, this would usually be the floor of a local school hall or gymnasium, we decided to pay the extra but then had reservations closer to the date. The thought of scrumming down with several hundred other smelly riders all fighting for a single cold shower and blocked toilet at the end of the day began to loose it's appeal so we engaged the services of Roly the cycle courier.

Roly's role was to be our slave, the deal was he would drive my big blue bus between stages, departing after we left and arriving before we finished having secured the towns best value residence and carried our bags to the room and placed them next to a chilled bottle of water. We agreed to cover his lost wages for the couple of weeks we would be away. We were set.

I won't detail each stage because A) it would be dull and B) I can remember very little of the riding. There are a number of things that do stick in my mind though. I can remember the race director addressing us each morning, he would give a brief of the route and anything else of interest and always the same piece of advice which went as follows: "Remember the race is not won on the downhills". This message would carry extra emphasis usually after a day when a rider was carted off in the blood wagon or as on one particular day when the helicopter was called out. I also remember his words echoing around my brain when on the second or third day my Hope minis developed brake fade on one particularly steep, long and rocky downhill and I had to just 'go with it', I weaved in and out of all those slow, non technical, Europeans on what was fortunately a very wide track at full speed. I can laugh now but at the time it was a little scary. Most days the riding consisted of fairly innocuous double track usually with fine views, especially through the Dolomites, and some fairly decent climbs.

Prior to the race my concern was that I would be playing catch up to Carl for 8 days. As the race dictates that each team of two riders must stay within sight of each other I was overtly aware that I was the weaker member of the team and Carl would be cruising at 60% while I would be sucking the very life out of my legs to keep up. Then something strange happened, after a couple of days I started dropping Carl on the hills and I would stop for several frustrating minutes at each summit waiting, watching teams that I had picked off on the climb go cruising past. It became apparent that Carl's feet were trashed, the combination of huge training rides and those super stiff shoes had made his feet so bruised and sensitive he winched at every push on the pedals. So it was at one overnight stops we sought out a bike shop and furnished Carl with heaviest, clunkiest most padded pair of bike shoes we could find. I'm not sure if they improved things but they maybe stopped things getting worse.

The TransAlp is a slick operation. As for any stage race the start and finish would be moved from town to town on a daily basis and each village or town hosting a stage would errect a massive marquee where all the racers would eat in the evening. After dinner there would be presentations to the stage winners who would usually be Bart Brentjens with Carsten Bresser and Lesley Tomlinson with Gretchen Reeves. We would then slope off for a restful night and Roly always managed to find somewhere excellent for not much money at all.