This is the Kraftwerk Trophy, and took place in Vienna for the first time, attracting people likeJure Robic, winner of numerous Races Across America and other long distance events. And he remains the man to be beaten, stuck with the fastest relay teams and missed the magic 500 ever so closely, completing 498.4km within the time limit.

And me?

Well, after 4 weeks of antibiotics and lacking reasonable training, I didn’t even want to participate… but good arguments persuaded me to register on short notice. In the singlespeed category. Not (only) for masochism, but also because my road bike is well worn after 9 years of racing, and the little noises it has started to produce would have probably driven me insane after 7 hours. I’ll eventually have to replace it, but that is a different story.

So – my strategy was clear: see what happens, and don’t make any big expectations. Of course you always get psyched my the race, but since I didn’t know how much form I had lost in the past weeks I decided to start slowly. Which wasn’t really a difficult decision, because the speed of the lead groups was terribly hard to hold with my gearing (48×16) – at 45km/h this translates to a cadence of about 120rpm. Not a problem initially, but after 6 hours or so your legs start to complain, and would rather have an easy 80-90rpm. So, better not burn all my matches right from the start, and quickly find my own pace.

My stomach wasn’t very happy with the race either, and around noon I was very close to just putting the bike in a corner, kick back and enjoy the afternoon sun in a supine position. Surprisingly, though, a longish break and a Bratwurst (props to the goys from fixedgear.at!!) put me back on my feet. The afternoon was everything the morning hadn’t been. The wind had calmed down a bit, so the tempo on the back stretch wasn’t quite as high and I not only held the speed of the groups I rode with, but I was actually able to do my share of leading work.

So, it was pretty clear that I would ride until the official end – especially since it emerged that from the originally 10 singlespeed riders (not counting my late registration) only one was actually riding. A shame really, and since now I couldn’t avoid ending up on the podest I tried hard to earn that place, too. So, full bore for the rest of the day. And it worked out just fine, barely riding over the occasional cramp but keeping the tempo high. I ended up riding 341km (given about 10h net riding time, that translates to about 34km/h average), placing 63th overall and defending my title in the (very small) singlespeed ranking.

Alright!

Mad props to the 2RadChaoten for this absolutely great race, so close to home I actually rode my bike to and from the race!

Kraftwerk Trophy
Results (Pentek Timing)
Mountainbiker Racing Team

As I lined up for the swim start, my strategy was very easy. Take it really, really easy on the swim (basically see it as a recovery swim from yesterday’s Salzkammergut Trophy), stay out of the usual fray and see how everything goes. With a little luck, I hoped to score a 1:30 swim, a 6 hour bike and survive the marathon.

I usually lined up fairly far in the front in an attempt to swim away from the mass brawl, but this time I remained way at the back, and lazily walked into the Wörthersee lake for the swim start. As the gun went off, everybody went crazy and turned the lake into a human washing machine — business as usual.

In contrast to the last time I’d done Ironman Austria (in 2005), the swim had been changed back to one single loop, straight out for 1800m, and two 90 degree turns back towards Klagenfurt and into the

for the last 800m.

The long straightaway swim made navigation almost trivial of course, but it also meant that there were no turns where the huge groups could be possibly drawn out a bit more. Even though I tried to stay out of the trouble, I got whacked on the head a few times, but had a fairly good swim apart from that. The battle continued after the two left turns, and even intensified as we were approaching the entrance to the Lendkanal. At one point, some guy that had been swimming alongside to my right suddenly veered way to the left and swum right over me. What the hell?!

Once inside the Lendkanal, the swimmers create a significant current, and you don’t even have to swim hard and still make decent progress. Since the swim exit is to the left and everybody wanted to get out as quickly as possible, I kept way to the right of the channel and just swam along easily.

As I got out of the water, I caught a glimpse of another athlete’s watch and estimated a 1:12 or so swim, not fast by any means but much better than my expectations, especially given the limited time I had spent in the pool in the previous months. I took my time to change completely into bike gear. I usually just stick with a tri-suit for the entire race, but this time I expected rain and fairly low temperatures, and after the the long day before I preferred to be more comfortable on the bike. So, after a fairly lazy transition of about 10 minutes, I hopped on the bike for a little ride.

Once on the bike, I tried to get up to a decent pace, but didn’t really know what to make of my legs. They felt fine at a base level effort, but it was way harder to actually push the pace than it usually is. Even the parts of the course where it’s fairly easy to go faster then 40kph felt awkwardly slow. Not that it really mattered, of course. I’d just stick to my plan, hope that I don’t go slower than 30kph on average (for a 6hr bike split) and see what happens.

So I rolled on, starting early on the coke (hardly surprising, I did feel a bit tired from the day before) and grabbing the occasional gel / half PowerBar / energy drink. Speaking of PowerBar, does anybody find the Cookies&Cream ones even remotely palateable? I hate them even more than the Chocolate flavor, and that’s not easy. Yuck.

I managed to stay well out of any drafting groups, but did see a few others who were a bit.. reluctant to keep the mandatory 10m distance. But overall the race officials did a fairly good job most of the time. As I approached the extra loop to the Faaker See, we did encounter the top riders going in the other direction, and there were some massive groups of obviously drafting riders right there. Hopefully that was only because it wasn’t possible to safely enforce the rules on this section of the course, and the groups were broken up later on. Anyway, this loop features a few climbs that are considered ‘tough’, but quite honestly I kept waiting for the steeper climbs until I realized that I’d already passed them. The Rupertiberg, usually thought to be a fairly long and cumbersome climb, also didn’t really show up on my radar.

Note to self: after 7000m of climbing the day before, most Ironman bike courses can be considered flat, and 39×23 is all you need.

After the Rupertiberg, the course continues with a few rollers before a long descent down towards Klagenfurt. There’s a straight section of maybe 2-3km of slight downhill where people usually go into the biggest gear they have and mash the pedals. I didn’t feel much need for going 45kmh instead of 43, so I tucked down and just rolled.

43.. 44.. 45.. 46.. 48.. Somebody needs to tell people that aerobars don’t automatically provide the most aerodynamic position on a bike.

This actually happened pretty frequently on other descents, too. People mashing by on the downhills, but almost coming to a full stop (relatively speaking) in corners that you could just roll through without even touching the brakes.

That applied to the first lap only, though. On the second lap, we got rain. Lots of rain.

It cleared up in between, but when it came down the sky really opened its flood gates. Apart from that the second lap didn’t hold any surprises. I stuck to my base level pace, got passed on the flat / fast sections by people on aerobars and returned the favor on the climbs. As I was going back down towards Klagenfurt it rained really hard again, and I pushed a bit harder just to keep warm.

Rolling back towards the transition area, I checked my bike split and was fairly happy. Hoping for about 6:00, I had rolled in with a 5:40 bike split. So a leisurely bike ride translated to a (roughly) 31.7kph average. Nice.

Since I had changed into bike gear, I had a relaxed second transition. It was still raining, so I decided to play it safe and went for long tights and two jerseys. I didn’t know what to expect about the marathon, and running out of energy in heavy rain would be a surefire way to become hypothermic and DNF.

One big advantage of the relatively bad weather was that the parts of the run course that were usually completely exposed to the sun and uncomfortably hot were no trouble at all. I quickly settled into a pace that felt sustainable, clicking off km’s somewhere between 5:30 and 6:00. Of course I got passed very often early on the run, as people tend to start much too fast and slow way down as the fatigue sets in…

Another problem I often see, especially in running races, is that people tend to eat way too much. You don’t do yourself much good by eating more than the stomach can handle, which isn’t much if all the blood is supposed to go into your muscles. That was actually hard to avoid, as the aid station workers were all but forcing the athletes to pick up gels, bars, fruit, etc. I stuck to coke and the occasional gel (about one every 30-40 minutes) and sometimes a piece of melon.

The rain subsided rather quickly, and I soon felt a bit overdressed. I took off the inner jersery but kept carrying it in case the rain came back.. that helped some, but at this point I would have preferred my usual running shorts. A guy I caught up with also made a statement about me being a bit overdressed in the surprisingly fine weather… well, he was wearing shorts and those ridiculously looking compression socks (that seem to be the latest fad, despite having dubious effects at best), so the only difference between us was that he had bare knees.

Sometimes I get the feeling that triathletes really are more susceptible to marketing fads and expensive toys than the average guy…

Anyway, the compression socks didn’t seem to work really well for him, because he had to end our little conversation and walk for a while, so I continued to plod on, making progress towards the half-marathon mark. I was pretty stoked about that, because even though my running time wasn’t all that great I hadn’t had to walk so far and felt pretty good, considering the circumstances.

There was a charity bell near the turnaround at the Lindwurm fountain in Klagenfurt, and I jumped and rang it every time around. That didn’t seem such a great idea the second time around, but I did manage not to cramp upon landing, so all was good.

I saw a few other guys on the run course, including Hannes Polak (who had a terrific performance and ended up fastest overall amateur with an awesome 8:41 race!), Yvonne Raffeiner and Christoph Pistek, and they all seemed to have a pretty good time.

At the beginning of the second lap I grabbed a gel at the aid station in Krumpendorf, and although I had taken care not to overeat my stomach didn’t feel so happy about the extra work. I didn’t feel like suffering through 21km with stomach cramps, so I decided to add a little walking to my plan, and skip the aid stations (except for a little water) until things got better. It took a while, but as I returned towards Klagenfurt I felt much better again and decided to try and run (or what passed for running at the time) the remaining 14km or so.

That actually worked quite well, and I figured that if I could hold a semi-decent pace I’d stay below 12 hours, well within my half-serious goal of ‘negative splitting’ and taking less time for the Ironman than for the Salzkammergut Trophy.

The only time I had to walk once more was the short uphill section at the end of the Lendkanal back up to the walking path.. but by then I was already well within single-digit km’s to go, and the rest was easy sailing. Back towards the transition area, a few more bends and then the 41km sign.. I knew there were others behind me, and I wondered if they were thinking about a finish line sprint. As I turned off towards the finish with only a few hundred meters to go, I saw that I’d possibly run up and possibly pass one or two guys ahead of me. I didn’t feel like maybe ruining their finisher photos, and I didn’t really care about mine, so I slowed down a bit and and remained behind them.

As I was crossing the finish line, I waved a ’10′ to one of the photographers to declare this my 10th Ironman finish (out of 10), in 10 years of racing. Of course a perfect score would have been a 10h finish, but I actually preferred taking the challenge to the next level with the Salzkammergut Trophy on Saturday.

A volunteer asked me if I was fine, and I had a hard time convincing her that I was actually quite fine and did not need any assistance, thank you.. walked over to pick up my street clothes, grabbed some food and and stood in line for the certificate and finisher t-shirt. Met a few familiar faces, and hopped in the jacuzzi for a little while.. unfortunately it wasn’t really warm, but it still felt pretty good, and it sure beat the showers (where they seemed to have issues with the boilers, 20ºC water doesn’t feel so good after a long, fairly cold day).

Later on I met a few fellow triathletes, and we drove into Klagenfurt for some real post-race food, and to talk about the previous day before heading back to the finish line to welcome the last finishers home. As always, that was a great experience indeed. Those guys had been out there for nearly 17 hours, and most certainly had a much harder time than I did. Awesome.

Then, as everybody went back to their hotels to catch a good night’s sleep, I also went back to my car, once more cuddling up across the front seats for a few hours.

Why?

• Because I can •

I knew that everybody else would be partying and getting together for a great time after the race, but unfortunately I didn’t really have much time for that…

By the time we had finished, it was 7pm, and I’d have at least about 2 – 2.5 hours of driving back to Klagenfurt. So I didn’t lose much time, brought my stuff back to the car, got a quick shower and was on the road again by 8:30pm.

The drive back to Klagenfurt was fairly uneventful. I stopped at a highway station to pick up some food and take a break – it was only about 250km of driving, but after the race I didn’t feel like sitting still for more than two hours at a time.

Back in Klagenfurt, I already had a good spot to park and sleep. The same place I had done so in many previous years, close to the Lendkanal and easily within walking distance to the Ironman City. By now it was almost midnight, so I didn’t lose much time, set the alarm to 5:30am and cuddled up across the front seats of my car.

Race day started with meeting Tom again at the transition area (to get my wrist band back), and bantering a bit about the upcoming race. Everything had turned out just fine, and fellow bikeboarder Werner had helped with the bike check-in. We checked our bikes and transition bags, and then I went back to get into swim gear and check in my street clothes.

By then it was already time to walk over to the swim start, but I still found a few minutes away from the noise to collect my thoughts and ponder the day ahead. I hadn’t swum much lately, and although I knew that my bike fitness was adequate for such a weekend, it still was one big experiment and I didn’t really know what to expect especially on the swim. My guess was to have a very easy recovery swim, maybe even as slow as 1:30, followed by a similarly easy bike ride (about 6:00) and then just see what happens on the run. In total, I hoped I’d do a ‘negative split’ race, taking less time for the Ironman than for the Salzkammergut Trophy.

Continue reading here…

Note: Please add your comments to the final part of this race report…

Given that my plans included more than just one race, I took it very easy, especially on the first few climbs. After the start, the course starts almost directly into the first long (~10km and 900m vertical) climb. That was actually one of the things I really like about the Salzkammergut Trophy: most of the climbs are quite long and actually allow you to settle into a good rhythm. And the descents are of course equally long and fast. Awesome.

I rode by myself for quite a while, passing and getting passed by others but never bothered to maybe keep up with others as I’d usually do. The forecast was fairly bad, but the first few hours of riding were overcast but dry. But as if on command, just as the 100km riders were getting on their way at 9am, the rain came.

Fortunately most of the trails were still fairly dry, and even with the rain it all was well rideable at first. With the long climbs it was also easy to keep warm, and the downhills were over fairly quickly. Plus, the rain subsided after a while…

The Trophy course isn’t all gravel roads; there are some passages that are fairly technical, and a few selected pieces (such as the awesome Jochwand-Trail) are available only to the 200km riders. But that came much later; at first we passed through the Ewige Wand, an awesome traverse on a path cut into a vertical rock wall (check out the NYX Photoreport for a few impressions).

Somewhere along the way I met Manuel, a fellow Bikeboard.at user, and we ended up chatting and riding together for the better part of the race. We actually came back to parts of the course a second time, as the 200km course looped back after an initial detour. However, by then all the 100km riders had passed through, and the fairly good conditions on the trails had severely deteriorated. What had been a rocky trail with some mud had now become a huge slippery mess, and some sections were simply unrideable without severe risk of wiping out.

Riding together really made the course seem much shorter, and we had a great time.. the weather was fairly reasonable most of the time, with intermittent but harmless rain. At least it wasn’t as hot as last year (up to 38ºC, according to some). There are some extremely steep passages that are a bit cumbersome, but the one climb I find the most cumbersome is the detour to Chorinskyklause and up to the trail head of the Jochwand Trail. It is actually very easy and simple and not too long (500m vertical over about 15km) but it is somewhat unnerving because it’s hard to judge one’s progress and comes fairly late in the race (after 130km).

However, the climb is rewarded with the Jochwand trail, a steep and rocky passage that is very difficult to ride, especially after more than 7 hours of riding. Great fun, though.

After that, we came onto the part of the course that I hadn’t seen before. There was a fairly flat section along the Hallstätter See, and then came the longest climb of the race, about 1000m of climbing over 10km. That was over surprisingly quickly, but two fairly unnerving things happened. The fairly good weather was replaced by heavy rain, and we noticed that I had lost one bolt of the rear suspension assembly, and it was slowly dismantling itself. Fortunately we managed to keep that under control by hammering the remaining part back into place every once in a while with rocks.

After the long climb we only had one long downhill, and another, shorter climb, and then it was all downhill to the finish. Right before the last climb we passed through an aid station that was set up inside a beer tent, and for a few moments we passed through the topical Gemütlichkeit usually associated with such events. However, we didn’t spend much time there with the goal almost in sight…

After the final descent, the remaining 10km were fairly flat back to Bad Goisern, and a good part of that on roads. We were riding through a true torrential downpour by now … with a little luck we might make a 13:xx time, so we did our best to keep the pace up, despite the bad conditions. Unfortunately we didn’t quite make it (14:01:xx), but that didn’t really matter. We had made it with ample time to spare, Manuel his first attempt at this distance and my first go on this course.

Continue reading here…

Note: Please add your comments to the final part of this race report…

What happens if the organizers of the Salzkammergut Trophy and the guys from Ironman Austria decide to put their races on the same weekend, but on different days?

At least one idiot will try to do them both.

I had signed up for Ironman Austria about a year ago, figuring it would be nice to do my tenth Ironman at the same place where it all started. I originally wanted to put in all my experience and really show a great effort, and maybe set a new personal best – but as so often life got in the way a bit, and I ended up training less than I should have to really make this happen. I could have still taken a stab at going sub-10, which should have been possible, but then another idea appeared on my radar.

Last year I had tried the 208km Salzkammergut Trophy MTB race together with Isa Höller, her first attempt. We got kicked out due to the time limit, so I still had some unfinished business with that course (I had done the 200km race before, but not since they changed it from two laps to one big loop). And when I realized that the Trophy would be on the same weekend as Ironman Austria (but on Saturday), an idea began to form…

At first everybody thought it was a joke, but I had figured out a way to do both races, with a little help from my friends. One of the biggest problems was registration (for both races) and the bike check-in for Ironman Austria, since that was on Saturday only and had to be done in person. Fortunately, the bikeboard is full of the most awesome people I know, and I consider many of them very good friends. A few of them would also be doing the Trophy, and the organizers were cool with people picking up the registration stuff for others. So Stefan registered for me on late Friday, and I’d pick up my stuff as soon as I’d get to Bad Goisern.

Meanwhile, I had driven to Klagenfurt and registered for Ironman Austria on Friday noon. Since somebody would have to register my bike and they’d probably check the athlete’s wristband, I confessed my plans to the volunteer and asked if she could maybe leave it loose enough that I could take it off. She found a solution, and I was good to go. Met a few friends and whiled the afternoon away before I handed over my bike and the wristband to Tom, who was also racing and had promised to find a way to check my bike for me. When they did go there on Saturday they encountered Werner, another fellow bikeboarder, who was working as a race marshal and graciously handled the bike check-in for us. So all of that came together really well.

On Friday afternoon I had an appointment with Günther and Alexandra, who had booked me to photograph their wedding in August, and we talked a bit and walked around town looked at good places for staging the usual wedding photographs. I had a great time, but it also went very quickly and I ended up driving to Bad Goisern much later than I had originally anticipated.

I arrived around midnight, and after a little hunting (my navigation system didn’t even know that road!) and phone calls found the place where Stefan had deposited my registration stuff for the Trophy. The 200km race started very early and Bad Goisern was booked full, so I hadn’t bothered to even start looking for a room. Found a quiet parking spot and made myself comfortable in the car for a few hours of sleep.

At 4am my cell phone reminded me of the long day ahead, and I got up, set up my bike and went over the course profile to remind me of what was ahead of me. Very nearly forgot to put the mini pump in my back pocket, debated long armed jersey, vest or arm warmers (and settled on short sleeves and a vest), and cursed myself for not bringing enough water. I rolled to the starting line, lining up way in the back to avoid the stress of the first few kilometers and just have a great day out.

Continue reading here…

Note: Please add your comments to the final part of this race report…

Fellow roadie Christian Federolf persuaded me to do the amateurs race with him, and he did the uphill time trial on the night before as well. The amateurs race started a few minutes after the pro’s had come through for their last lap, so we lined up in a side road. Race day was fairly cool, but at least dry (in contrast to the previous days) and the low temperature at least made the climbs more bearable than high heat.

After the pro’s had come through, we were let onto the course for the actual start. Christian had warned me before that if I wanted a good placement it would be essential to stick with the lead group from the start, but I ended up being blocked on my way in, and started from several rows back. In contrast to the pro’s, who did a different first loop, we started right into that long climb. I tried to settle into a sustainable rhythm and move up into a fast group at the same time. However, the lead group was pretty much gone.

Even worse, although quite a few riders were around me, no reasonable group formed, and I ended up riding the first lap more or less alone. After the long climb, the course went slightly downhill towards St. Georgen, where a short 10% climb was followed by a boring, mostly flat section into the moderate headwind, and finally the long and very fast downhill back to Triberg.

By the end of the first lap, I got caught by a larger group, and decided to stick with them for the second lap. The climb at the start was already somewhat nasty, but being in a group certainly helped and the spectators also did a good job. The group actually got over the climb more or less in one piece, and quickly reformed into a good paceline. As usual, only a handful of riders were actually pulling, and I tried to do my share of work and keep the pace up.

On the third and last time around, I realized that I still had very good legs and decided to push it a bit on the longer climb, and ended up opening quite a gap to the other riders of my group except for one fellow rider. We worked together for the entire lap, catching a few riders who had apparently been dropped from the lead group(s) but none of them stuck with us.

At the St. Georgen climb I mis-shifted and dropped my chain; I got it back on without having to stop, but ended up being quite a bit behind the other guy. A truly honorable sportsman, he soft pedaled at the crest until I had caught up with him, and we pushed on towards the finish. By then, the weather had turned to the worse and the cloud cover dropped to the point that we were riding in fairly thick fog. Fortunately, a police motorcycle led us for the better part of the lap, and seeing its taillight ahead made it easier to anticipate the corners, especially on the fast descents.

Despite our best efforts, on the final downhill our hard work turned out to be fruitless: the group we had dropped caught us again, only 2km from the finish line… some of them decided to battle it out on the uphill finish line sprint, but I couldn’t be bothered and just rode it in.

I ended up 45th out of 68 finishers, 13 minutes behind the lead group. That doesn’t sound too exciting, unless you consider that the level of this race was extremely high, with many top amateurs and C License riders at the start. So I’m still pretty happy with the result.

Links:

• GP Triberg-Schwarzwald
• My pics from the UCI pro race
• My pics from the amateur uphill time trial
• Official results

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Life changes, people change, and events change. The Kraftwerk Trophy 2008 was announced with a radically new location, and in the meantime I had finished my thesis and moved to Konstanz, Germany. So when the time came to pack my gear and get ready for the race, it wasn’t a simple matter of throwing everything that may be useful into the car and drive 40km to Donnerskirchen; instead I had to carefully consider every item I would put into my backpack, and haul everything by train to Vienna. Since my choice of train connections was quite limited, I also couldn’t bring my road bike and had to make do with what I had left at Alexandra’s apartment in Vienna: my singlespeed cyclocross bike.

Not with knobbies, of course – I changed those out to slicks. But I would be 24hx48x16, one gear for the entire course, and although I knew that 48×16 was a fairly stiff ratio I didn’t have the time to change that. So the plan for the race was also clear from the beginning: don’t over do it, play it safe and see what happens. I’d be happy about 400km, and 500km would be great, but no real goals.

Alex was nice enough to drive to Donnerskirchen, but it was clear that I wouldn’t ask her to hang out and watch me go around in circles for 24 hours; not if she had better plans (she did) and I didn’t have any serious goals for the race (I didn’t).

I was lucky enough that the FIXEDGEAR.AT guys had plenty of room in their tent (which was located in the support area), so I could set up my stuff very close to the race course instead of having everything up at the regular camp ground. That was even easier because I actually hadn’t brought that much stuff. A little extra food, and my secret weapon: home made chicken broth, which would become the nectar of gods later on. Otherwise my plans were to pretty much just make do with what was available.

The start was pretty much standard as 24hr races go: going out way too fast, too hyped to finally get going to be rasonable about the speed. I stuck with the lead group for the first few laps, but it was immediately clear that I would be able to keep up with them for any reasonable amount of time. The climbs were okay, but what killed me were the accelerations coming out of corners (gear ratio too long to get up to speed quickly enough), and the fast descents (gear ratio too short to pedal at reasonable cadences). So after having fun playing with the big boys for a few laps, I dialed back to my own pace, keeping up with packs on the climbs and not minding if they pulled away on the descents.

Riding alone had its benefits, especially with a singlespeeder, because I wasn’t compelled to pedal at 160rpm just to keep up with a group on the downhills. It also meant that I could just stick with my own rhythm for refilling my bottle. I’d pull out every 10-15 laps to refill the bottle, maybe grab a bite to eat and go back out onto the course.

The race had started at 10am, and it turned out to be a fairly hot and humid day. Not my preferred weather for racing. I like hot (and dry), cold, even cold and wet can have a certain (unreasonable) appeal. But hot and humid? Nah. I had some trouble finding my rhythm on the course, found a thousand excuses why the race wasn’t going so well. The heat, saddle position wrong, inappropriate gear, not enough sleep.. a thousand negative thoughts.

But as the day went on, the heat subsided a bit, and (stupid as this may sound at first) I was yearning for the night. Cooler air, less wind, and the additional variety of the Dark 12 riders (the 12-hour race was from 9pm to 9am). I turned into the feed zone for a longer break a bit after 8pm, to eat a little more than just another energy bar, and also get ready for the night – lights and more clothing. That break ended up being a bit longer than originally planned, because I decided to wait for the start of the 12hr race so I wouldn’t be caught up in their high-speed frenzy.

From time to time, Alexandra also kept me amused with short text messages to my mobile phone, and I did my best replying to them during the occasional breaks.

The night itself went by surprisingly quickly… I began to feel better (which is also reflected by the lap times), and actually had a lot of fun blasting through the turns, especially a sharp right turn after a slight downhill, where the ideal line was aiming for – and just missing – the corner of a house on the inside. Great stuff. Sometimes I’d take it easy for a while and chat with fellow riders, but I mostly kept to myself and the tiny universe that my headlight carved out of the night.

Lap after lap after lap, refilling bottles every now and then, losing count how many times I’d repeated that procedure. My stomach would complain about the sticky stuff I was eating on the course, so at every break I’d drink some of the salty chicken broth I had brought. And it was still hot! That stuff really worked wonders, putting my stomach back in order almost immediately.

At some time in the morning (maybe around 3am) it was clear that I would easily reach my goal of 500km, and I decided to make another longer break, and maybe catch a little sleep. Set my alarm for one hour and cuddled up in my sleeping bag.

About 20 minutes later I was wide awake, feeling energetic and ready to go – so I got back on my bike. My left knee started to complain about forcing pedals around in circles several thousand times, and even the slight uphills became surprisingly difficult.

Still, as the new day awoke, my motivation soared and my lap times continued to improve, to the point that I rode several laps with the lead pack before they also started to pick up speed for the final few hours. The Dark 12 riders left us as quickly as they had come, and the 24 hour riders were once again alone for the last hour of their journey.

Just as if the clouds had waited for the moment, I felt a few raindrops mere minutes after the 12 hour race had ended… damn. Surprisingly slippery corners and 23 hours of riding don’t mix very well. Luckily the few drops were all that was to it, and the clouds dispersed again. I started to count how many laps I’d be able to pull off before the final bell, and when we passed the finish line with less than 9 minutes to go I realized that I didn’t really know how long the 3.9km lap would take me at this point, since I’d been riding without a heart rate meter or bike computer. So I decided to go nuts and lay down a fast lap, and see what happens. This turned out to be one of the fastest laps I’d ridden at well below 7 minutes, so I reached my goal of “one more lap” with relative ease.

And then it was all over.

I changed back into more reasonable clothing and raided the buffet. Amazingly enough, they still had everything. One of the few races that actually provide enough food, even for a post-race feeding frenzy. Since I didn’t have a car or too much gear, packing my stuff back together was a surprisingly simple matter, and I spent most of the time until the awards ceremony chilling, chatting with others and pretty much just getting in the way of the guys cleaning up the finish area before I walked over to a nearby restaurant for lunch and the awards ceremony.

There hadn’t been an official 24 hours singlespeed class, since even the hardcore singlespeed guys had opted for the 12 hour ssp race instead, so I was quite surprised when they announced me as the sole – and therefore fastest – 24hr singlespeed rider. Yes, I scored hardware at the legendary Kraftwerk Trophy!

Overall, I ended up 12th with a total of 148 laps / 574km; the last time I had checked the intermediary results I had been 14th, so that also was quite surprising.

Links:

• Kraftwerk Trophy homepage
• M3GA photo story
• Behind the scenes photo story
• Official results

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

That event wasn’t only about personal achievements – for each covered length, the Parktherme paid 0,15EUR to the Licht ins Dunkel charity. Our goal, then, was to at least get the registration fee back towards the charity.

On our way to Bad Radkersburg we had al little navigational trouble, but with the help of a GPS receiver and a few phone calls we were back on track. The Parktherme was still empty when we arrived, but we didn’t have enough money for our registration fees, so we set out to find an ATM and stock up on food and other stuff on the way.

Back again, it immediately became obvious that everybody else had arrived in the meantime, so we found ourselves at the end of a surprisingly long waiting line… when it was finally our turn, all the small and medium sized t-shirts were gone (as usual), and we had the choice of L, XL or XXL bed sheets. I will never understand how there are never, ever, too many ‘small’ sizes. Something tells me that there are probably very few participants in a 24 hour event that need XXL sizes..

Anyway, after successful registration we hauled our gear to the cots that our solo starter Hannes Polak had reserved in the meantime. Our places were in the additional sleeping tent, conveniently close to the access to the pool. Unfortunately it later turned out that everybody else I knew (eg. the Tri Stars Koma, the Free Eagles, etc.) were all located in the other area, and I missed all of them.

Damn!

Oh well, after sorting out all our gear we went through our plan again. Pretty simple, really: During the first day 30 minute turns with 2h breaks, in the night two 1h turns (with 3h breaks, as Iris didn’t care to swim those turns), and on Saturday back to 30min turns again, or simply whoever still has anything left in them… After a short round tour of the area it soon was time to get ready for the start.
I had the dubious honor of swimming the first turn, and as expected it was quite a mess. Everybody was pumped with motivation and energy, which lead to any number of unnecessary jostling in the water. At an especially bad encounter my googles began to leak, and it was pretty much blind flying for the rest of the turn. Which isn’t that amusing if you’re passing a slow swimmer and at the same time the guys in the other direction on your lane decide to fight for every centimeter as they pass a guy who’s already passing another swimmer.. oh well..

As the time went by, people began to calm down a bit, and in the evening everything became routine: swim, shower, change, eat, rest, change, swim, …

…and also attend to Hannes on the way, who had been incredibly strong until then, permanently ranking in the top 3 (sometimes even in first place!). Totally awesome.

With the night came the longer turns. The first 1h bout was over very quickly — and the break to the second turn as well. So quickly in fact that I was a bit late for my second turn! Oh well, it’s not as if we had lost our chances for a medal with that.. so off into the water and at least swim the remaining 45 minutes at a decent pace!

The water was quite warm during the night – almost too hot for a long sleeved neo, but quite right considering the low outside temperatures: in some of the paper cups the drinks had literally frozen to solid ice blocks!

The next morning’s sunrise was absolutely spectacular; unfortunately the forecast for the rest of the day wasn’t that good, but at least the early morning brought sunsine and smiles to everybody’s faces.

Back to the 30 minute turns, the rest of the day just flew by. Hannes had to take a few breaks because his shoulder began to hurt under the enormous strain; unfortunately we also weren’t always exactly sure about his current ranking because the hourly lists were sometimes quite late and since we had to swim none of us could track either Hannes’ total distance or the laps of his immediate competitors.

The last 30 minutes were miraculously mine again; since I had covered 302 laps according to the last intermediate result, I thought it would be fun to end with 333. That wasn’t officially possible, as only even laps were counted (even though some intermediates did show odd lap counts), but whatever. The missing 31 lengthts only correspond to an average of 2min/100m, but even that is a small challenge after 24 hours. Of course everybody wanted to do their best for the final laps (especially fun: the 100m turns of the Tri Stars Koma to really blow themselves up); nobody gave up an inch when being passed, not even at the turns…

Well, and then… it was over.

Hannes had also shown a remarkable final performance: Being only a few laps behind the third place, he started an incredible chase that unfortunately didn’t quite work out: only 200m separated him from a podium finish…

Still, what a feat: He did 55600m, that’s more than one thousand lengths, in those 24 hours. Awesome.

Our relay managed a distance of 69400m, of which I contributed 16800m (336 lengths). And considering how I felt afterwards, I don’t even want to imagine how Hannes did when he went (pretty much directly) to a Ball on the very same day, and stayed there until well into the night…

The tri4ce.at team has also created a separate report on Hannes’ performance.

And the Licht ins Dunkel (“Light into the Darkness”) charity probably also has a reason to celebrate: unless I’ve misheard the announcer, the total distance covered by all swimmers was more than 120.000 lengths (that is more than six million meters)!! Which translates to a contribution of about 18.000 EUR to the charity.