BICYCLING
Words & Photos: Gareth Barns
The best way to think of the Trans Alps, an eight-day stage race, would be as a European equivalent of the Cape Epic.
I was actually coming back for more, having done it last year, which says a lot about how quickly the memory of the pain fades and all that remains is the sense of accomplishment that fuels the desire to do it again.
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Trans alpine perfection
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The Trans Alps is an incredible experience, purposely designed to be challenging with this year’s race - although less technical and slightly less climbing than the last - still boasting bigger mileage, steeper gradients, and much hotter weather. It is contested by teams of two in the Men’s, Women’s, and Mixed categories. I raced it with my wife, Alexis, and our challenges started before the race even began. About eight weeks out, Alexis was diagnosed with Rabdo Mylosis, a muscle wasting condition that can only be resolved with at least a month’s rest. This pretty much put an end to her training programme and set her fitness back to square one, so there were some hard decisions to be made as to whether we would still compete. In the end, we decided to go for it and before we knew it, we were in the van and on our way to the start with Drew, our Scotsman mechanic.
This year's race, held from 13 to 20 July,
covered 680 km through Germany, Austria, and Italy, with more than 20,000 m of climbing (that’s twice as high as airliners fly). The scenery was spectacular, from the quaint German alpine villages with folk dressed in their lederhosen, to the traversing of the sheer spires of the Italian dolomites, and finishing up in the picturesque Italian resort town of Riva del Garda. Most of my focus was on racing, although when I did remind myself to look up, the scenery I found myself in was unbelievable. The race also had a few firsts in its history, with its longest-ever stage (120 km, Stage 7), its shortest-ever stage (39 km, Stage 8) and biggest-ever single climb (1,800 m). This race messes with your view of the world, it makes that which is big seem small and that which is small seem big. You know your concepts of the world have gone crazy when you hear yourself saying, “Oh, tomorrow it’s only a 1,000 m climb, that’s nothing!” On the flip side, it makes anything that is only slightly wrong, such as a slight niggle or wrong bike set-up, into something major. It was after the 1,800 m climb on Stage 3, having sat for two hours in the same position on the bike that my butt told me that I needed to change what I initially thought was a good saddle. Another example that was not so easy to fix was my handlebar grips. They were new for the race, which in hindsight was a bad idea, and by Stage 3, I had developed very painful blisters on my hands. By then it was too late, the damage was already done and I just had to get on with it.
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This is where the difference is made between the good cyclists and the great cyclists. Any
decent cyclist with a bit of fitness can go out and have a good showing at a two-hour race, but the Trans Alps is won by the team that is best prepared, who can perform day after day, and are able to foresee and resolve issues.
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Part of that preparedness was planning race nutrition and hydration. We figured we should be consuming some sort of energy every 20 to 30 minutes, which equated to around 80 gels and 40 bars over the length of the race, and we used them all. And let’s not forget all the recovery drinks at the end of each stage, and all the calories we were trying to get in at breakfast and dinner. An example of not getting it right was Stage 6. We could see in the profile that there was a big gap between water points, so to compensate we took extra water, but even this turned out not to be enough. We ended up riding for two hours without water. This miscalculation not only cost us performance on that particular stage, I also suffered for it the next day, posting our worst stage result for the whole race. When planning for this race, you have the option of organising your own accommodation or staying in the race camp, which we did to try save on costs. This in itself is an experience, with everyone camping on the floor of the local village’s Sports Hall. It’s a good chance to meet many of the competitors and experience the ‘European way’, but all I can say is remember to bring earplugs!
One of the nice things about this race is that no matter where you stand in the placings, you develop friendly rivalries with the teams at a similar ability. We met some amazing people, in fact, I think it would be pretty hard to find another place that has so many amazing people in one place. I suppose that anyone who decides to do an event like this has to be someone pretty special. One particular team we met was from Spain, and even though we couldn’t understand Spanish, we still developed a healthy rivalry with them to the point that we swapped jerseys at the end.
Our results varied quite widely from day to day, with our worst and best results interestingly coming on the penultimate and final stages respectively. As mentioned, we posted our worst stage result of 28th on the longest stage when I was still suffering from the effects of dehydration on the previous day, but then on the final stage into Riva del Garda, we had a blinder and managed to place 12th. When it was all said and done, we heartily celebrated a category result of 19th. It was then the party started with champagne flowing, followed by a dip in the lake.
What we found about our performance at this year's event was that despite our lack of fitness, we were still fairly average on the climbs, strong on the flats, and very strong on the descents. There’s no denying it, this is a race for the climbers, with climbs going on for over two hours. However, it was quite satisfying after being overtaken on the long climbs, to regain those positions on the technical descents. It was especially entertaining to watch the reaction of the guys as Alexis bombed past them on the technical descents.
“Why do we do this to ourselves?” Well, I think the answer is for that sense of accomplishment in that moment when it’s all over. And as a gauge to how powerful that feeling is, this was the second time I had put myself through it and it will probably not be my last. •
Anyone who has done a race like this would have asked themselves the question,
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