the transalp

Last year I rode the TransAlp mountain bike race: 8 days, 675km and over 20,000m of climbing through Germany, Austria and Italy.

I am not, however, an elite mountain biker. I am an overweight, middle-aged bloke with a dodgy knee who clung to the tail of this amazing race with my race partner who, prior to signing up in a drunken bet, hadn’t ridden a bike for 10 years. And he has IBS.

Our story is the tale of life at the back. Trying to make the cut every day, being able to say that “we did it”, our only victory being over those who fell by the wayside due to injury or mechanical failure.

Football fans can play football in the park, but they cannot take a shot on goal at Wembley; cricket fans don’t get to pad up and walk out onto the pitch at Lords. I’ve always thought that one of the joys of cycling is that you can ride the exact same routes as professionals. Not to try to put yourself on a par with the pros, but to say that you have some understanding of their trials, perhaps. That is what the TransAlp was for me, a chance to ride not just the same route as professional riders, but to ‘compete’, to ride not at my own pace, but the pace dictated by cut-offs and a dreaded broom wagon. For me, it was an inspiration, an opportunity to test myself in a way that daily life simply doesn’t. I want to pass on that sensation to others and to tell them “yes, you can”.

The absence of a need for road closures or specialist courses in cross country mountain biking means that time cut-offs are more generous off-road compared to on-road, so you can sign up to an official UCI race with no licence, no team and an off-the-shelf bike. Armed with little more than an ironic cycling top and a handful of cereal bars from your local supermarket you can put yourself on the starting grid alongside cycling legends. You don’t just get to ride the same route, you get to compete, on a level playing field and under the same rules, against the very best.

So it was that in July 2013, I found myself in the middle of 1200 eager riders in Mittenwald on the German border with Austria, a number board cable-tied to my bike. With a “woo-hoo!” from Blur’s Song 2 we headed over the start line of the TransAlp, an elite, mountain biking stage race which attracts over 30,000 spectators and at over 650km long with more than 20,000m of climbing is regarded as one of the toughest events in Europe.

Ahead of me were professional riders. Everyone rode in pairs but the pro-teams were typically fielding 6–10 bikes, just to add to the intimidation. These racing machines would finish each day before my partner and I had passed the mid-point feed station. Some mornings you would see them, barely able to walk across the hotel foyer on ruined legs before the ritual of a 60-minute spin-up on a turbo-trainer loosened the muscles enough to enable them to complete another 130km stage with average speeds of over 25kmph, despite 3000m of climb. The decision to enter the TransAlp came about because I wanted a challenge to focus me after a knee operation. My partner signed up for the classic reason; a drunken bet. With only seven months to attempt to turn an overweight 40-something and a 30-a-day smoking IBS sufferer with no mountain biking experience into elite mountain bike riders, we trained almost every weekend through winter and spring. Gradually we increased our mileage, but we never came close to the daily climbing totals that the Alps would impose. Living in the UK where the longest continuous road climb is 8km and rises just 272m, it is hard to prepare your body or mind for the 34km of continuous climb up 1900m from the start at Mayrhofen to the Italian border at the top of Pfitzcherjoch on Day 2 - or the 22km long, 1800m slog from Brixen up to Lüsener Scharte on Day 3 of the TransAlp. Stage racing for the first time is scary and it is an event format that barely exists in the UK. Fitting training around work and family life, the best you can do is a two or three day ride. We rode the South Downs Way, the Trans Cambrian Trail and countless loops in the Peak District. Sometimes we’d ridden in snow and carried our bikes, many mornings we’d ridden in darkness on extended commutes through sleet and rain. We thought we’d trained well, but we’d never tried to smash our legs for eight consecutive days. We really had no idea what it would be like after four or five days of riding for eight or nine hours. At some point, we realised that the word ‘only’ took on a new, curious definition. As in ‘it’s only 85 km tomorrow’ or ‘we should only need seven hours that day’. After reaching Alleghe on Day 4, time became almost without meaning for the first two thirds of each remaining stage: I realised I might be four or five hours into the day and have barely noticed more than a few minutes of that time. Often designed as ski-runs, the trails through Austria and into Italy regularly have no flat sections at all. This is something a UK rider is totally unprepared for. In the UK you know that round a corner the trail will flatten, a meagre respite to let you catch your breath. This does not happen in the Alps. Every day, at some point, we would have to fight the urge to give up. But then, at that very point of total exhaustion, we would crest a pass and laid out before us would be another stunning Alpine vista with a slim line of singletrack dropping down across a lush meadow and disappearing temptingly into the forest far below. Sometimes the views were staggering in their composition in a way that reconfirmed how far we had ridden, like atop Monte Grappa on Day 5 where we emerged from the edge of the Dolomites to be rewarded with a view out across the Treviso plain to the Adriatic coast, Venice shimmering on the horizon. And anyone can do this. You pay your money, you book your flights and you can ride these amazing trails. You don’t have to be famous or a super-human pedalling machine to be cheered on by crowds. It doesn’t matter whether you are racing for first place or just racing against that person in front of you for 527th position. The red mist still comes down to make you reach deep into your soul to find a reason to keep climbing, or to banish fear to the edge of your mind as you fly into the dust cloud down a 30km long rock and gravel trail at 50 kph. You do not have to be a professional to do this, you just need to have the heart and determination to beat the broom wagon each day. "YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A PROFESSIONAL TO DO THIS, YOU JUST NEED TO HAVE THE HEART AND DETERMINATION TO BEAT THE BROOM WAGON EACH DAY."

Having completed the TransAlp, picked up my finishers shirt, a medal and a free beer on the shores of Lake Garda, I reflected on the fact that the chance to compete against professional cyclists had taken me to the TransAlp. “Forget Strava”, we had said, “put a number on it and see where you really stand”. Not quite the Lanterne Rouge of last place for us, but we had only hung onto the tail of the event by the skin of our teeth. That may not sound too special, as achievements go, but in an event where hundreds can fail to finish, just making the cut each day was the goal we had set and achieved. We came perilously close to failing on Day 4 (St Vigil) when we were nearly caught by the sweeper team that collect the trail markers behind the race. We’d ridden away

downhill from them with absolute abandonment before skidding to a halt, the way blocked to allow a helicopter to pluck a broken rider from the forest trail. The misfortune of that rider was our lucky chance. The few minutes we were late crossing the line that night in Alleghe were reset to allow for the imposed safety delay and we kept a clean sheet.

I now know that I have neither the talent nor the ability to hurt myself in the way that only a professional mountain bike rider can. As a sign of respect for professional athletes I could never call myself an elite mountain bike racer. But I did earn the right to call myself an elite mountain bike race rider and that will do for me.

BALKAN RIDE

Words, Photos & Sketchbooks by Raphael Krome

On an early morning in August 2013, we lined up with our bikes in a sun-drenched street in Budapest. Few of us had spent time together on a bike before, some had never even met before. And until that morning one of us had never even ridden more than 60km.

But there we stood, with nearly 1700km of riding ahead of us, and little more than a week to do it.

Thirteen different characters, unified by a love of cycling and the will to cross the Balkans on fixed gear bikes. Through Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and finally Istanbul and Turkey, right up to the border of our continent.

It all began in 2012 with a ride from Munich to lake Bodensee, to meet some friends from Stuttgart and circle the lake on a sunny weekend. Surprisingly, three guys from Hamburg had mixed with them and after two days of riding and having fun we felt that 300 kilometers was not enough. In the end, we rode more than a thousand; from Milan to Barcelona, fixed, with racks and panniers, sleeping on beaches and traffic islands. After that, everybody knew that this was just the beginning.

We started with a beautiful ride alongside the river Donau. Half of us were riding brakeless, which led to some exciting moments when sudden obstacles appeared, such as stray dogs bursting out of the undergrowth. Just as we were getting used to the dogs and making headway, a deep pothole destroyed all vague dreams of a perfect day one - skidding, a leg in the air, a sudden crash. The front rider had forgotten to warn the rest. Clenched teeth; a wounded hand barely out of plaster. We nursed our injuries with a long soak in the warm waters of the river Donau later that night. Our first night’s shelter was the backyard of A Müheli’s, a lovely bike shop in Szeged. That first night under the stars we made contact with the most aggressive mosquito species known to man, highly skilled in precisely spotting any non-protected millimeter of bare skin, and impervious to the several layers of absolutely useless expensive mosquito repellent. Within minutes we had been all but drained of blood.

All we’d learned about cycling in Serbia so far was that Belgrade’s cycling clubs stage their championships indoors on rollers because it is too dangerous to attempt them outside. Promising.