11 minute read
balkan ride
Ahead of me were professional riders. Everyone rode in pairs but the pro-teams were typically fielding 6–10 bikes, just to add to the intimidation. These racing machines would finish each day before my partner and I had passed the mid-point feed station. Some mornings you would see them, barely able to walk across the hotel foyer on ruined legs before the ritual of a 60-minute spin-up on a turbo-trainer loosened the muscles enough to enable them to complete another 130km stage with average speeds of over 25kmph, despite 3000m of climb.
The decision to enter the TransAlp came about because I wanted a challenge to focus me after a knee operation. My partner signed up for the classic reason; a drunken bet. With only seven months to attempt to turn an overweight 40-something and a 30-a-day smoking IBS sufferer with no mountain biking experience into elite mountain bike riders, we trained almost every weekend through winter and spring. Gradually we increased our mileage, but we never came close to the daily climbing totals that the Alps would impose. Living in the UK where the longest continuous road climb is 8km and rises just 272m, it is hard to prepare your body or mind for the 34km of continuous climb up 1900m from the start at Mayrhofen to the Italian border at the top of Pfitzcherjoch on Day 2 - or the 22km long, 1800m slog from Brixen up to Lüsener Scharte on Day 3 of the TransAlp.
Stage racing for the first time is scary and it is an event format that barely exists in the UK. Fitting training around work and family life, the best you can do is a two or three day ride. We rode the South Downs Way, the Trans Cambrian Trail and countless loops in the Peak District. Sometimes we’d ridden in snow and carried our bikes, many mornings we’d ridden in darkness on extended commutes through sleet and rain. We thought we’d trained well, but we’d never tried to smash our legs for eight consecutive days. We really had no idea what it would be like after four or five days of riding for eight or nine hours. At some point, we realised that the word ‘only’ took on a new, curious definition. As in ‘it’s only 85 km tomorrow’ or ‘we should only need seven hours that day’. After reaching Alleghe on Day 4, time became almost without meaning for the first two thirds of each remaining stage: I realised I might be four or five hours into the day and have barely noticed more than a few minutes of that time.
Often designed as ski-runs, the trails through Austria and into Italy regularly have no flat sections at all. This is something a UK rider is totally unprepared for. In the UK you know that round a corner the trail will flatten, a meagre respite to let you catch your breath. This does not happen in the Alps. Every day, at some point, we would have to fight the urge to give up. But then, at that very point of total exhaustion, we would crest a pass and laid out before us would be another stunning Alpine vista with a slim line of singletrack dropping down across a lush meadow and disappearing temptingly into the forest far below. Sometimes the views were staggering in their composition in a way that reconfirmed how far we had ridden, like atop Monte Grappa on Day 5 where we emerged from the edge of the Dolomites to be rewarded with a view out across the Treviso plain to the Adriatic coast, Venice shimmering on the horizon.
And anyone can do this. You pay your money, you book your flights and you can ride these amazing trails. You don’t have to be famous or a super-human pedalling machine to be cheered on by crowds. It doesn’t matter whether you are racing for first place or just racing against that person in front of you for 527th position. The red mist still comes down to make you reach deep into your soul to find a reason to keep climbing, or to banish fear to the edge of your mind as you fly into the dust cloud down a 30km long rock and gravel trail at 50 kph. You do not have to be a professional to do this, you just need to have the heart and determination to beat the broom wagon each day.
Having completed the TransAlp, picked up my finishers shirt, a medal and a free beer on the shores of Lake Garda, I reflected on the fact that the chance to compete against professional cyclists had taken me to the TransAlp. “Forget Strava”, we had said, “put a number on it and see where you really stand”. Not quite the Lanterne Rouge of last place for us, but we had only hung onto the tail of the event by the skin of our teeth. That may not sound too special, as achievements go, but in an event where hundreds can fail to finish, just making the cut each day was the goal we had set and achieved. We came perilously close to failing on Day 4 (St Vigil) when we were nearly caught by the sweeper team that collect the trail markers behind the race. We’d ridden away downhill from them with absolute abandonment before skidding to a halt, the way blocked to allow a helicopter to pluck a broken rider from the forest trail. The misfortune of that rider was our lucky chance. The few minutes we were late crossing the line that night in Alleghe were reset to allow for the imposed safety delay and we kept a clean sheet.
I now know that I have neither the talent nor the ability to hurt myself in the way that only a professional mountain bike rider can. As a sign of respect for professional athletes I could never call myself an elite mountain bike racer. But I did earn the right to call myself an elite mountain bike race rider and that will do for me.
Words, Photos & Sketchbooks by Raphael Krome
On an early morning in August 2013, we lined up with our bikes in a sun-drenched street in Budapest. Few of us had spent time together on a bike before, some had never even met before. And until that morning one of us had never even ridden more than 60km.
But there we stood, with nearly 1700km of riding ahead of us, and little more than a week to do it.
Thirteen different characters, unified by a love of cycling and the will to cross the Balkans on fixed gear bikes. Through Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and finally Istanbul and Turkey, right up to the border of our continent.
It all began in 2012 with a ride from Munich to lake Bodensee, to meet some friends from Stuttgart and circle the lake on a sunny weekend. Surprisingly, three guys from Hamburg had mixed with them and after two days of riding and having fun we felt that 300 kilometers was not enough. In the end, we rode more than a thousand; from Milan to Barcelona, fixed, with racks and panniers, sleeping on beaches and traffic islands. After that, everybody knew that this was just the beginning.
We started with a beautiful ride alongside the river Donau. Half of us were riding brakeless, which led to some exciting moments when sudden obstacles appeared, such as stray dogs bursting out of the undergrowth. Just as we were getting used to the dogs and making headway, a deep pothole destroyed all vague dreams of a perfect day one - skidding, a leg in the air, a sudden crash. The front rider had forgotten to warn the rest. Clenched teeth; a wounded hand barely out of plaster. We nursed our injuries with a long soak in the warm waters of the river Donau later that night. Our first night’s shelter was the backyard of A Müheli’s, a lovely bike shop in Szeged. That first night under the stars we made contact with the most aggressive mosquito species known to man, highly skilled in precisely spotting any non-protected millimeter of bare skin, and impervious to the several layers of absolutely useless expensive mosquito repellent. Within minutes we had been all but drained of blood.
All we’d learned about cycling in Serbia so far was that Belgrade’s cycling clubs stage their championships indoors on rollers because it is too dangerous to attempt them outside. Promising.
On our way to Belgrade we somehow split into two groups and lost each other. Now, a rule we’d set at the beginning of the tour
(because it had worked on our 2012 excursions) proved to be wise: follow the route, no matter what! That might not sound too adventurous, but considering our route was devised on Google maps by connecting scenically promising stages and exciting cities while roughly avoiding big highways, believe me: it is.
A fully lit up football field in the middle of nowhere was the stage for our sudden and unexpected reunion. The group that had ridden ahead had been forced to a standstill by punctures. Without a pump between them, they had enjoyed a long walk to the football field. Just a few kilometers later we were given the chance to celebrate that unexpected reunion – a crazy Serb waved a bottle of Jack Daniels out of a little café on the darkened village road and shouted: “Come on! Drink with us!” – and sure we took that chance.
Barely fifteen minutes and half a dozen ‘one more, why nots’ later, some of us were doing joyrides in the crazy Serb’s car. We were wasted. Breaking loose was hard and some Serbs followed us, long after we’d left the village behind, doing wheelies on their superbikes.
50 kilometers later and a little closer to sober again we entered Belgrade, followed the biggest neon ‘hotel’ sign we could see and before anyone could even express his feelings on the idea, we found ourselves in fully Bang & Olufsen-equipped luxury apartments with rainforest showers, eating falafel on our expansive balconies.
The kind hotel owner loved the story of our journey to Belgrade and gave us some really special rates. The next day came as they always do, and we had to leave amazing Serbia and the crazy Serbs.
We met the first Bulgarian hills, leading to some intense tunnel rides - the local lorry drivers have their very own definition of safety-clearance.
Escaping onto a parallel cobbled road led us directly into a Roma ghost village with a big factory ruin.
Spotting an American flag on its roof, we approached curiously, coming to a sudden stop when we met a Spanish-speaking military guy who advised us to turn around NOW and immediately leave the area. Welcome to no-mans-land.
For the first time during our trip we could feel vibes of depression in the villages we passed. Everything was rather shuttered, compared to Serbia or Hungary. It was hard to believe that Bulgaria is a member of the European Union. The monstrous apartment blocks of Sofia, with junkyards in between functioning as playgrounds underlined this impression.
After Sofia, the mountains got higher. We crossed four, more than 3,000 meters high, over a distance of 230 kilometers.
We circumnavigated a huge, upland reservoir with clear, turquoise water, fantastic views after every bend. The riding was so demanding, so satisfying. Cold, wayside mountain spring water every few miles helped to cool our heads.
Our daily energy supply was always at hand. There were fresh figs, plums and grapes growing wild along the road. But promising alternatives serving local specialties were always welcome - the most memorable being the ‘Cantina’, little more than a roadside shack. Hungry and thirsty as always, we were served a simple meal of spicy, grilled meat with roasted tomatoes and onions, prepared by a wonderful old man who told us that we had just eaten all his supplies for an entire day, as he never stored ingredients for more than 15 meals because otherwise the shed would get robbed by night!
And this was just one example out of so many stories on our tour that showed the boundless hospitality, kindness and joie de vivre of the inhabitants of the Balkans. It is hard to describe what you feel when you are utterly thirsty, and you discover a little shed in the middle of nowhere where an old farmer selling watermelons for 80 cents a piece rejects your money, smiles and nods.
In the slipstream of a herd of sheep, we passed the Greek border.
Arriving at the tourist town of Orestiade we had to ask ourselves: who on earth chooses this city for vacation? Loads of tourists and tourist-shops, ultra hot, no sea, no beach, no nothing. Instead, soldiers and camouflaged vehicles passed us on a regular basis.
