"Roll up first or just polish your face?" Anyone who goes on tour with Carsten Bresser has to be tough. Not just in terms of the durability of your leg muscles - but also in digesting his sayings. I choose the "roll in first" option in the hope of delaying the journey into the realm of pain. Even though everyone should realise that a ride with one of Germany's best mountain bikers will never have the status of a coffee ride. Not even when Bresser has a fresh 20,000 metres of altitude in his sinewy legs. Because when the likeable man from Neustadt turns up for the agreed date at the end of July, he has just come from the BIKE Transalp, which he won in a mixed team with Canadian Alison Sydor. And then there are the 18,000 metres of altitude from the Trans Germany in June. That's four and a half times Mount Everest - some bikers don't climb that much in a lifetime.
I squint at his bike. At least there's a small chainring fitted. But before I can check whether its teeth have ever made contact with the chain, Carsten pulls me out of my nightmares - in the purest Palatinate dialect: "Go on, schloofa kannsch daheim!"
You can find these MTB tours around Neustadt in the PDF download:
1st Kalmit tour (21.56 km | 818 m elevation gain | 2 h 30 min.)
2nd Weinbiet tour (18.88 km | 579 m elevation gain | 2 h)
