Mountain bike racing
On the Sunday before I left, I rode in a 6hr mountain bike race at Jarrahale as a team with Andrew my neighbour from number 1.
I rode the first lap but did not do as well as I thought, my heart was racing but I did not seem to be going so fast. Only during Andrew's first lap, did I realise my rear disc brake rotor was bent. I got it straighted and worked a little on the rear derailleur as it was playing up. I nursed it through a second lap but on the third it just died, taking out the frame hanger with it. After Andrew rode the next lap, we swopped pedals and race numbers on his bike and adjusted the seat. It was fairly new, had 27.5 inch wheels, carbon frame, 125mm travel on the suspension and an XT groupset. It was lush and even including the time for the mechanical work, my lap on his bike was easily the fastest for us that day.
Upon our return to Vienna, I bought a new mountain bike. A Scott Spark 730 with 27.5 inch wheels, a carbon fibre mainframe, 25% more suspension travel than my old Giant, 180mm front rotor disc and a XT groupset - very similar to Andrew's Giant Trance. I had brought the Cranks Bros Candy pedals with me, and the shoes and bar grips.
Why?
Because I had entered the Salzkammergut Trophy, route C which is 73km horizontally and the really scary bit, 2.4km kilometres, vertically. I discovered this race about 5 years ago and was keen on doing it, mainly because of spectacular photos of riders on tracks carved in to the side of a cliff.
I had ridden a few rides around the Viennese Forest out the back of Susannah's parents place, getting an idea of what mountain biking is like around here. Well, very hilly for a start, little technical single track but lots of climbing and high speed downhills on quite smooth dirt roads. We managed to time the rides in the sunshine , as we did have quite a bit of rain at times. Susanna even went with me on one ride - she does not really do mountain biking even though she is quite quick up hills.
On Tuesday, 1st of July, we drove back to Salzburg and had lunch with Willi and Roswita, and his brother Alex and his girlfriend, Rosanna, the following day. Alex and Rosanna are still doing silly kilometres on high end road bikes in the mountains. They suggested Gaisberg (Female Goat Mountain) just outside Salzburg.
Two days later, we rode up Gaisberg, about 860m above the apartment. It is where all the telecommunications are and you can see the red and white tower from the balcony window, 1288m above sea level. It is where the paragliders launch. It is where there are magnificent views of the surrounding mountain ranges on a clear day. It has got to be the main training ground for anyone on a bike. Anyway, it was 2 1/2 hrs in the saddle door to door with a rather long lunch at the end of the climb - slow waiters. It was a serious crawl skywards, grinding away on the lowest gear for over an hour . . . a lesson in mountaineering on a mountain bike - and this was on bitumen. Guys going up on road bikes may have less to carry but don't have a granny gear and I was in it most of the time. Easily hit 70km/hr on the way down, the disc brakes start to smell on some of the corners! (Actually, no granny gear, just two chainrings up front but the big cog at the back is massive).
Over half way up, plenty of paragliders. Suz had the grace to sweat a little and wait for me a few times.
The view from the top and the new bike.
And the rain, it just kept coming down out of the sky . . . we were thinking of driving to Werfenwang and riding up to Willi's hut from the bottom but the weather is so bad there, they are driving back home.
There is a reason why it is so green and lush around here, and the streams are always running; it rains at least every third day, Salzburg over a year gets 1200mm. This also means that any time the sun comes out, the air is filled with the noise of hedge trimmers, lawnmowers and leaf blowers. The farmers harvest the grass twice over summer.
Friday (4/07/2014) was a leasurely ride up the river (Saalach, a tributary of the Salzach ) and across the border (the Saalach) to Germany for lunch at a former custom 's house before continuing on up the river to a massive bike shop, again, in Germany and passing yet another run of the river powerstation. We don't actually buy anything but it is good to check out the latest trends and thinking.
Saturday (one week to go) was a trip to Obertraun which is where my race starts. We had decided to try and do the first part of the race to the top Salzberg Mountain some 500+ m above the lake Hallstaettersee, me at the highest point. We actually got off and walked parts.
Salzberg is at the back of Hallstadt which is a gorgeous World Heritage listed town squeezed between the lake and the mountain side. It is full of tourists but achingly beautiful. The the main road bypasses the town by way of a tunnel or two.
The square at Hallstadt
That is a pear tree bearing fruit in front of the middle house.
We actually went up the side of the valley and down the route from Salzberg . It was extemely steep, scarily steep and we are supposed to be coming up it in the race? It runs through a very vertical salt mine museum display that must run half a dozen stories high. I know I will not be riding this bit! Note, they seal the paths when they get really steep - even on a mountain bike, this is where you run out of gears.
You can see from the photo that we are some way up a very steep hillside, that is Obertraun across the lake. See also the homepage of the salzkammergut trophy website . . . those side railings really don't exist. The colour of my disc brake rotors change by the time we get to the bottom . http://www.salzkammergut-trophy.at/
We get back to the car at Obertraum just as the skies open up and it hammers down. Stopping in Bad Goisten at the opposite end of the lake and where the race finishes, for afternoon tea, there is not a puddle to be seen. The drive takes about an hour and half from Salzburg and is at the back of the Saltzkammergut area. It is all very beautiful and we go back over the pass we had ridden over a few weeks ago.
Sunday was a beautiful , warm day and Susanna had always wanted to go to the Naturbad Aschauerweiher in Bischofswiesen. It is a bio swimming pool in a mountain valley. No chlorine, they just recycle the water through 12,000 of plants with some clever piping and pumping, so incredibly cool. The green make over of the old public swimming pool was finished 10 years ago. It is kept at 22 degrees during the summer and is available for skating on in winter. It covers over 8,000 m2 of which half is for swimming. There are reeds and lillies in the main swimming pool. In the background of the photo is a small wall behind which is the main reed filter through which the water from the main pool is recycled through.
After climbing Salzberg on the Saturday , I was in no mood for further climbing. And there was a little climbing involved in getting to the pool. But getting angry and upset about it is like getting angry and upset about getting hurt in a fight. This is Salzburg, and while it can very flat, it's surrounds are incredibly hilly.
A side note, the streams and rivers appeared incredibly clean, though we never saw any fish. Another run of the river power station, though.
We have been really lucky with the rides and the weather.
On the Monday before the race, we rode up the cycleway to a thermal spring just north of Hallein about an hour up the Salz river from Salzburg. The skies open up on the way back, very dark clouds having come up from behind the mountains. Large, slow drops but now going downstream and with a tailwind, we managed to cover the gravel track before it got really wet. It was not cold and the water off the sealed road was fairly clean, and it was the first time we had actually been caught out. We even had laundry on the balcony previously drying in the previously hot sunny weather. I understand why even the mountain bikers have mudguards over here. I may yet get some for the race . . . heavy rain while crawling up a mountain is no big deal, but coming down . . .
On the Tuesday, we managed Gaisberg , again . This time with heavily overcast skies, you could not even see the top. Yet the road was dry, and compared to last time, we shot up like rats up a drainpipe - almost. The 900m of climbing took us 1hr 20 min and maybe 10 minutes to come back down - I manage to hit 75km/hr twice.
Two hours later, it starts raining and keeps raining . . . so I do the tax for SkyFarming in the afternoon . . . .
On the Thursday, we went back out to the race route. We managed to climb the third major uphill and go down the biggest hill mountain, well over an hour of climbing but less than 10min to come down, hit over 50km/hr a few times but was not really looking at the speedo! Some of those corners will launch you clear into space! There was about 4km of very high speed downhill on bitumen below the lake but the rest of it is this fairly smooth, coffee rock free, limestone logging road that, as we found out that day, you can drive a semi over!
Suz where we believe was the very top of yesterday's ride.
The logging road ended at the lake which has a large resturant/hotel at the western end of it. Quite a lot of people were about and it is easy to see why, very pretty.
Just under 2 hours to do 25km! That is out to Hendersen and back in Freo, usually an easy hour. Most of the time was spent grinding the lowest gears into Ninja stars. That said, the views, when available were indeed spectacular. And the lake at the top of the valley and near bottom of the big downhill, was very beautiful, the cloud cover actually below the peaks of Dachstein. Yet no rain that day.
Anyway I have now done about half the course in one direction or another with most of the rest as flatish bitumen. I now know that the first real hill will be incredibly steep, the top 120m or so being at a gradient of 30% - I will be off the bike and walking at this stage AND this bit is sealed! Also, I will be probably doing 50+km/hr on the bitumen just before a very sharp right turn off the road at the very bottom of the big downhill (below the lake above), into an eating area and just before an hour or so of solid uphill. I also know that there is a flat section - not the top - about 2/3s up. I also now have over 3 vertical km in my legs over the past 10 days.
I had an idea that this was this kind of serious, when I signed on . . .
Race report
I finished first, of course, being the only one in the category of Australians doing route C. Finished eighth in my age, there is a tedious amount of statistics available - finished 360 overall.
It was wet, it was slowly raining more or less the whole time until about halfway up the last major uphill. Dispite the road being mainly limestone, it still got squishy and sucked at the tyres. The organisers said that times were down on previous years.
Accept for a few small bits and the last major downhill, it was not technical, and certainly the hardtail 29ers were the way to go. For the money, they are a good 3 kilos lighter (say around 4% lighter including rider). (As most of my off road riding is on tight, rocky, technical circuits and I am not so young - the older you get, the more travel (suspension) you need . . . I got the dualie.)
Photo from Suz, I wore the red raincoat the entire time, this was as we go under a main road and just before we leave Obertraun after a little play in the forest behind the town .
The biggest part of the race by far was the grinding climbing in the lowest gear. I walked up the whole of the first major hill, the one Susanna and I rode down the previous Saturday, directly above the tiny village of Hallstatt. I was not alone, except for a few over enthusiastic diehards, everyone pushed up. And in the last 100m or so where the gradient kicked up 30%, even they got off and pushed, I was surprised at how much grip my shoes still had on such steep and wet pavement.
We crest the first summit and I go down at a fair rate, until an angry shout precipates a blur on my left. I am passed like I am not moving. This inspires me to relax the brakes and I take a fall on the second switchback. Just a few scrapes and bruises on my left leg, the pain is hidden behind the neck and the shoulder aches. Still, there is a very apparent line to take along the high speed downhills, though it disappears at the sharp switchbacks as there is no concensus on how to take them.
We go down and across the bridge in front of the raging waterfall Sus and I had reached in our first ride in the area. I stopped at the food area before starting the big climb of the day. More grinding and I got off and walked a few times, I found it very hard on the neck and shoulders. The summit was an inflated arch and a banner announcing the highest point of the ride, 1505m. And the first group of cheering supporters since leaving the salt mines.
The sounds of alpine skiing come anytime we pass a village or farm - cow bells and cheering.
I managing to find someone fairly fast to ride behind to descend the big mountain but we only pass a couple of riders. At one point I get angry with him for kicking up so much dirt but it is off my own front wheel. This is the hill I went down with Suz, so I know not to relax too much at the bottom which is the flat road around lake Gosausee lake which then drops steeply before the sharp right and off the main road to the next eating station and the start of the final big hill. This is where I hit the 68km/hr. At this food station, I stuffed myself with gingerbread cake (very nice), banana pieces, chocolate biscuits and drank powerade and refilled the water bottle. All this, whilst watching the hard men of Category A shoot past on their 29er hardtails.
As I crawled up the last hill, what I remember most is being passed, regularly, by these Category A (hardest Mountain bike race in Europe with a dropout rate of 50%) and Cat B riders. No packbacks or even raincoats, here. At risk of stating the obvious, this is a race for climbers. Yes, there were techical bits, and my skills here were better than the riders I was with (this was not Kalamunda Circuit) but they were short and rare. Felt better near the top when I saw this stocky guy wearing a jersy with the Swiss flag on it, walk. Ok, he is big but he is Swiss (obviously! actually, I have just checked, he was not Swiss, the two Swiss guys came in over an hour before me). I join him walking for a few hunderd metres. I am really quite shattered at this stage.
The final big descent was not where I thought it was. Coming down off the last mountain had us into the valley floor, through farmland and the upper valley village of Gosau. The sun had finally come out and I even got announced over the megaphone in one point. Beautiful, sealed cycleways out of the valley, including a very rough section being rebuilt and then onto the main road (motor traffic held at bay, sweeet) and a modest down hill. Then witches hats appear and a guy waves me off the road and straight up yet another f#$%^& uphill. I think I had recovered a bit as my legs were able to keep spinning. Then, at last, the route goes down hill through thick forest. The userline is defined as well as ever, but the rocks are bigger, this is certainly rougher stuff than normal previous and fairly steep and fast. I am actually very glad to make the bottom where the tracks turns into some muddy forest floor. It is mostly normal road back to Bad Giosen where the finish is. Just as you think you know how goes, there is always another obstacle, another little surprise. Some mud work, down and up steep slippery embankments. Offered beer at one point but only drink half, too tired to care about tossing the cup on the ground.
I manage to find some energy to pick up the pace towards the end, at least it is flat. The finish cannot come soon enough.
The crazy ones are those on the unicycles doing downhill the next day!
Vital statistics
4256 riders from 40+ countries
Categories
A, 211km, 7,049m vertical climing, starts in Bad Goisern, 750 riders
B, 119.5km, 3,848m, starts in Bad Goisern, 1,300 riders
C, 76km, 2,446m, starts in Obertraun, 503 male finishers, 21 Did not finish. 43 women finish and 5 do not.
D, 60.4km, 2,074m, starts in Bad Ischl, 400 riders
E, 53.5km, 1473m, 1,300 riders
F, 37.9km, 1114m, 400 riders
G, 22.1km, 688m, 400 riders
All finish at Bad Goisern
Vital stats from my speedo,
distance: 76km
average speed : 14.6km/hr
time : 5hr 13m in, t hat, of course, is riding time, actual time was 5:32, came 361 out of 600, midfield, very happy to have simply finished. First guy came in at 3:15.
max speed : 68.8km/hr - this was on the bitumen road just down from Lake Gosaus