For the second time at this year's Transalp, the stage started at 8am. Torsten and I trembled towards the start of this year's longest stage, which was still a brisk 11 degrees Celsius but with a blue sky: Over 116 kilometres, we had to conquer another 3000 metres in altitude. But the magnificent panorama with the rugged rock giants in San Martino bathed in warm sunrise light distracted us somewhat from our nervousness. It was nice that the town said goodbye to us with a sun salute after yesterday's hailstorm!
At the start, the undulating profile made for a very fast pace on the relatively short climbs, which were never extremely steep, however, so that we were able to ride in a larger group for a while. My legs felt surprisingly good and fresh today. But rather as "fresh" as an old slice of bread after, ironically, being popped in the toaster again to revitalise it before eating. But that was obviously enough to get a little further up the field today.
For the first 15 kilometres, however, all participants had the knife between their teeth, each seemingly wanting to get a good starting position for the first long descent. And rightly so, because the descent turned out to be a trail as wide as a towel with lots of cross roots and stones, some the size of handballs, which wound smoothly down the earthy forest slope for a good 400 metres. Today seemed to be my day, because shortly before the trail I was able to overtake three Masters riders who had more power than me on the climbs but were significantly slower on the downhills. This gave us a clear run, we rode through the forest like young gods and gave our bodies a good dose of happy hormones. As the race progressed, we even managed to catch up with the teams ahead of us in the overall classification and literally fly up the 1200 metre climb to the Passo Cinque Croci with them.
Rollercoaster ride on studded tyres - that's mountain biking!
Today's stage was a real scenic highlight, with fantastic panoramas, rugged rock formations and lush green mountain slopes. Simply marvellous! After the pass, there was a 25-kilometre high-speed descent on asphalt from 2000 metres above sea level to 350 metres above sea level, which we hurtled down at over 90 kilometres per hour in places. Even if these are not descents to my liking - I prefer the ones at the beginning of the stage, when it gets technical and rough - it was still an adrenaline rush to be on the bike so fast and make the brake discs glow before every bend.
This also reminds me of an anecdote about my first Transalp participation. Back then, disc brakes were just as established as fullys - in fact, they weren't even around yet. "Nobody needs them!" was the verdict among my mates at the time. But high-speed descents had their pitfalls in store for rim brakes. Namely, when they gripped the rim flanks and generated so much heat due to the friction that they burst the inner tube! Fortunately, that didn't happen to us today.
But our legs almost burst as we pressed along the cycle path for the next 25 kilometres with a headwind and a barely visible incline at 300 watts on the crankshaft, and the speedometer still only showed a depressing 24 km/h (in neutral conditions you can easily go over 30 km/h!). As boring as the route on the flat was, the last few kilometres were varied and fun: wild changes of direction, constantly changing surfaces and constant ups and downs were to put a big grin on our faces at the end - a fun rollercoaster ride on studded tyres! That's mountain biking!
