Bike4Peaks - Day -1
I am not sure what i have signed up for, as I sit in a small German bar ordering dinner in a small mountain village called Rupholding. Rupholding is a mountain pass away from Austria and is also close to the worst of the flooding here in Europe, and I am here for a 4 day mountain bike stage race. Bike4Peaks starts tomorrow and the first day has two big climbs in it, and the second one will be taking us 300m vertical above the snow line! It should be interesting, as well as wet, and hopefully not too cold. Each day is between 70 and 85km long with about 2,200m climbing each day, and has just under 1,000 competitors. Tomorrow I start at my start number 693, then each day after that i start more where i finished the day before.
The day 1 profile below..
Getting here was interesting with the flooding, as some trains were running and others were not. For a while there it looked like I was going to have to wait 4 hours in a small town, so just caught a taxi. I had another small drama as I put my bike back together, and could not work out why my rear derailer was not working, until I looked at the handlebars. Somehow the airline managed to snap the derailer cable. Lucky that was all they broke. It must have been how I packed the bike. Better luck next time.
Hopefully the sun will shine tomorrow and I will have tales of sunny mountain passes. One can only hope.
Hamish
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