EnglishRace Report: 24 Hours of Finale Ligure
24 Hour Mountainbike Cup & Festival
Finale Ligure, Italy
www.24hfinale.com
This was my first race with the Mountainbiker Racing Team, and even though our primary goal was to play it safe, of course we were willing to see how far we could get. We entered as a mixed relay team: Isa Höller, Jimmy Steiner, Lukas Salzer and myself. There weren’t any mixed classifications, so we ended up racing in the men’s division… but who cared? Not us.
The race had a “Le Mans” style start – running a loop of maybe 5-600m on the race course before you hopped on the bikes and went off. “Step is a triathlete“, they said. “Surely he can run well, even with mountainbike shoes“. So it was upon me to brave the mass start of about 400 athletes…
I seeded myself in the second row – I didn’t want to get stuck in the mess once the main field tried to hop on their bikes and get going, so the plan was to run fast and then hope for the best. Good idea, as everybody was already shuffling and pushing each other even before the start, and the very front was the only reasonably safe place — if you could run fast enough. Luckily, it worked out just fine: I got on the bike in 7th position overall, and pretty much had clear sailing for the first few laps.
I had only incredibly strong riders in front of me, and the initial two laps should be too early in the race to be slowed down by lapping slower riders. Or so i thought, because on my second lap I was already passing a few guys who had to walk their heavy downhill bikes on the climbs… I really, really suffered on my first lap – the heart rate was close to 180 when i got on the bike, and never got substantially below 170 for the 27 minutes or so. The second lap was much better, but I wasn’t adjusted to the dry heat and dust and was very glad we had decided for 2-lap turns instead of longer intervals.
Maybe I should say a few words about the course. It is very, very technical. A lot of singletrail, the gravel roads are almost all climbs and directly exposed to the sun, the downhills rocky and with ruts that deepened significantly over time, and also some very technical uphills (rocks, roots, deep sand, tricky turns).. nothing you’d enjoy riding unless you’re spending a lot of time on the bike. Oh, and the final downhill. I am SO in love with the final downhill. Super fast passages with tight banked corners, and twisty singletrail passages. One photographer mentioned that everywhere else in the world, such a course would MAYBE be accepted in a downhill park, but it would be totally unthinkable in such a race.
Oh, the blissful insanity of riding that course for 24 hours..
I really have to say that Isabell Höller was riding just as hard (and fast) as we all did – or tried to, a totally amazing performance. I am deeply in awe by how well everybody of our team rode, but especially so with her! In the morning she clocked a 25-minute and a 26-minute lap – a time that rivals my own best laps…
We switched to a 3-lap turn at night to allow everybody to rest up just a bit longer, and surprisingly enough I actually got some sleep during my rest period. Fortunately our schedule also meant that I had two turns at night, because I really, really loved to ride the course at night. The riders in front kicked up a lot of dust, and the way the headlights cut through the dust was absolutely stunning. It also got a bit cooler, a welcome relief from the dry heat we had endured during the day.
At some point in the morning (the race ended at 2pm) we realized that we were in 4th position overall – fairly safely ahead of the guys in 5th place, and the guys in 3rd had a few minutes on us, but who knows? Deliberating on wether we should switch to one-lap turns and all-out riding — and maybe catching the guys in front — I miscalculated Lukas’ lap times and was late for the relay exchange.. a major blunder, but it pumped me so full of adrenaline that I ended up riding one of my fastest laps – even including the time I had missed!
In between turns, we checked out how our fellow solo rider Thomas Widhalm was doing, and boy did he kick ass. Not only his competition’s, but ours too: his initial laps were faster than what we were riding, and he didn’t slow down by much!! He ended up winning the race by several laps, only stopping twice to pee. Everybody else had to take much longer rest breaks from the demanding course!
Speaking about finishing, we managed to keep our 4th place. No hardware of course, but we delivered an very strong performance, and had there been a mixed division we would have won it by far.
Isa, Jimmy & Luki – I am very proud that i could race with you guys! Congratulations to Thomas ‘NoBody’ Widhalm for his huge success, and also to Wicht & Pepi who did a great job supporting him and didn’t get much sleep either.
I’ll definitely be back next year!
Stephan’s Flickr photo set
Photos taken by the sportographers
