Transalps DAY 1 Written on September 4, 2010, by andys.

Distance: 36.3km

Climb: 1223m

Descent 1034m

Time: 2hrs 48’30’’

Heart average: 161bpm

Heart max: 179bpm

ZipVit burnt: 1507kcal

Stage position: 1st

Overall position 1st (by approx 8mins)

A flat road runners’ stage today. To be honest not really our cup of tea, but we’ve both been doing plenty of flat running over the last few weeks, so after covering the first 10k in well under 40minutes we were still feeling fresh. A small group of 3 teams (ourselves, a German pair and a team from Holland who were evidently enjoying the flat intro) quickly formed with the rest of the field stringing out into the distance behind. At 11km the track turned into a path and the gradient made for a sharp incline. It was our prompt to hit the front and run at our own pace on our own terrain. After a nice gorge section of a few k we returned to forest paths and eventually a muddy ski piste. At about 1600m (not very high for an Alpine race) we summited and dropped sharply to the valley bottom. Luckily the path was narrow and the terrain quite hairy. It was super slippy, rocky, rooty and generally gnarly. Excellent! 5k later we were back at the valley floor confident that we’d probably pulled a few more minutes out of the teams behind due to the rough nature of the descent and then it was a question of getting the legs back into “road mode” as we had a final 6k along gravely trails to take us to the finish line and a leg refreshing dunk in a very cold stream (could only manage 5 minutes it was that cold).

A hot shower, a Tim speciality cheese and ham bap and an Andy Walling leg rub later and we’re feeling fully rejuvenated and ready for the same again tomorrow…. Ok, that’s a slight lie, we’re actually pretty zonked and looking forward to a big plate of pasta and bed.

Tomorrow looks better. We start with a steep climb from the gun, so there’s no “messing around” on flat paths in the valley bottom…

1 “rep” down, 7 to go.