Transalp - stage 2

view from Ischgl - in the rain

Sorry about the delay - We have had no internet access for 2 days

Stage 2: Imst Austria to Ischgl Austria

"It will rain today" - no 50% chance of showers. Simply - "It will."
Every day the race announcer starts 90 minutes before the stage announcing in German, Italian & English.

This event is big! Every day we start from the stadium, a pavillion crated in each village for the race finish & the subsequent days start. There is food, massage, bike wash, mechanics & of course all the factory teams & expos. Every day they break the stadium down & move to the next town.

Starting with stage 2, the racers are divided into staging zones. The top 10 open, masters & mixed get to the front line. Then 11th to 50th place teams get in to zone "B" with remaining teams seeded into zones "C" & "D". Fortunately both Chipotle-Titus-Velonews teams made group "B" so we are now close to the front line & don't have to sit with our bikes at the start for over an hour to get a spot.


Because of our staging, some tired legs & one monster of a climb coming up at only 7 km the start was much more tame than yesterdays. The peloton still rolls out fast & rides very tight. I would suggest some experience with road racing to any riders considering this event. The first 7 km were neutral, but still 40kph. As announced, just at the bottom of the climb the entire field was stopped to wait for a train. the race was then off & running.

It had poured rain all night & was drizzling as we started climbing, several km up a paved road & then onto a 2 meter wide double track. The grade was intense! We climbed at 10%-20% without any climb less than that for 10km. It was relentless. Thomas Dooley noted this was the hardest climb he has every ridden anywhere & all our team members concur. This comes from riders who have been MTB racing in the US for years & have also ridden many of the great climbs of the tour de France & Giro d'Italia. It was just plain hard. Equally amazing as the difficulty was again the quality of rider. There was a double line of riders wheel to wheel with no gaps as far up as you could see. Every rider in my general vicinity, around 150th, was in the same gear - little chain ring with one cog saved in the rear in case it kicks up more. Certainly the top pros rode a bit larger gearing though I find it hard to imagine they were middle chainring it. The race book is quite precise at marking the course. I knew from my Garmin we were about a kilometer from the summit. I head bells & assumed they were from a crowd cheering at the top. Alas, after turning the corner it was actually cows with the bells & we did have to continue another kilometer.

After cresting the top we were treated to a fast muddy double track downhill matching the ascent. Climbs 2 & 3 of the day had about 1/2 of the gradient - now similar to the top climbs of the Tour de France. Each 10k climb was on pavement which brought no complaints from any of the riders at this point. The mist & drizzle had lifted & the sun poked through the low clouds highlighting the beautiful valleys we were riding up. All the grass is hand cut for the milk cows so the valleys look like yards. The hillsides are so steep they cannot use machines to cut them.

The descents are double track or single track. There were several technical descents & it became readily apparent that many of these riders are not adept at technical riding. They were lined up walking down the steep rocky drops. Mark Gouge led his teammate Drew Geer down through dozens of riders picking up a lot of places. Unfortunately at times the line is so dense we had to walk very ridable sections as well.

pristine single track heading into the finish (photo: transalp)

I have hear riders criticize Transalp as being a "road ride". Most of the last 30k of this race was on pristine single or double track - fast, twisty, up & down though mostly up. This was as sweet a piece of single track we have ridden anywhere.

Our teams are holding up. Hogan & Dooley finished 17th with Gouge & Geer in 25th. This moves us into 15th & 24th respectively in the G.C. We are riding sensibly & not putting 100% effort into any stage as we have 6 tough days left & the hardest yet to come. This could become a race of attrition. The starting field has 155 masters teams, 303 men's teams, 20 women, 34 supermaster (age >100 years combined) & 72 mixed. There are no other categorizations such as "sport" or other age breaks. There are no sport level riders here. If you are racing this you are an open level racer.

Geer & Gouge finishing in Ischgl Austria

Hogan & Dooley look a bit better

The Bikes of Transalp

I had been told "everyone will be on a hard tail in Transalp". This is certainly not the case. About 3/4 of the bikes are full suspension with 1/4 hard tails. There are no 29ers. This just has not seem to hit europe yet. There are also no single speeds though I have heard one rider is attempting it on a single speed. The combination of brutally steep, long hills & fast flats makes a single speed impractcle. The most common big brands are Scott & Specialized. Scott is probably the most dominant brand in the race. Cube is a european brand that is common. Carbon frames abound everwhere. The mythical tale of the europeans riding old steel rigid bikes just does not hold. This is a high tech world.

Drew Geer
Chipotle Titus Velonews


The opening climb was like no other climb I have ever ridden anywhere. The biggest difficulty was that it never let up. The next 2 climbs were not too tough after the initial burst. The generally uphill finish was primarily single track & was actually very fast & fun. It was easier to push hard over the short steep rollers than the long grinds.