Albrecht Route day 3 Up early, well early considering we were on holiday for a carbo loading breakfast in preparation for another days hard ride it was certainly going to be harder than yesterdays with another 75 kms on the agenda but this time 2300 metres climbing was to face the peloton. The Hotel Mozart did us proud with a big breakfast and then we set off, once again the hard tail boys Dom and Clive were at the fore as the smooth black tarmac was once again leaving some of us to consider our choice of steeds. The first hour saw 20 kms clocked up despite a few stops for photos and a bit of checking the route. A regroup in St Anton and then the climbing started, at first smooth tarmac and then rough gravel tracks nothing that could not be completed on a hard tail, then the tracks finished, by this time the group has split, Clive Evans was at the head looking super strong with the young whipasnapper Dom throwing in the towel and saying he was going to make sure 4th man Paul S was ok despite there only being one path up and then it was the first hike a bike section, now at this stage we had been riding for 3 hrs so the reactions were starting to suffer, so the uphill which was a mixture of walking and riding the rocks was becoming a little more challenging and I had a quick dismount over the bars but no harm done. At the top myself and Clive, looked behind and with no sign of the boy Dom decided to carry on, now at this stage I was hoping my Epic with front and rear suspension was going to give me the chance of getting revenge on Clive for giving it large beans on the way up. Unfortunately the downhill was a lot less tame than the uphills so we had a fairly easy ride downhill to the meeting place of Gaulta where we met up with the van and it was time for a late lunch ok not a lunch but an afternnon coffee and cake stop. Now by my reckoning there was only 22kms still to go so I had been hoping that this small subsistence was going to be enough to carry me along for this in old money was only 14 miles to go or so I thought. After having a few operator issues with my GPS on the first day so far so good today and there had been no problems, so after the refreshments on we went all was ok to start with and then a boo boo occurred, as myself and Clive realised we were off course and heading up a big climb going away from the route but still roughly heading in the right direction of the hotel, now the sensible thing would be to turn round and find the right track, but hey can you imagine myself and Clive turning round, the answer was obviously no, so on we carried, up and up until the path ran out and it was time for some more hike a bike eventually we realised we were getting now where other than towards an impassable ravine so we headed straight down completely off any track and found the road we had been on over an hour ago. Once we got the right track we started making progress again, the weather was turning bad again with rain coming down and the last climb up to the hotel was 5 KM, all seriously uphill. About 3 km up we met Paul in the van, who had a problem, there was a barrier preventing the vans route to the hotel. The plan was hatched we would ride to the hotel and try and sort it out. By this time the energy gauge was reading empty and at a rapid 5 km an hour the last few Kms were going to take a longer than hoped for. As we finally made it to the oasis of the hotel it was chuck the bikes in the garage and there was Paul Solbe and Doms bikes who had clearly done us big time and were first to the hotel. A bit of chatting in broken English we finally managed to get a pass to open the barrier the bad news was that I had to ride back down to give the pass to Paul, as I ride down the remnants of the group were coming up and there was certainly a few tired teddies with Henry on his carbon hard tail at the front looking good but others behind were clearly also on empty and really struggling. The rendezvous with Paul was on and the pass worked there was certainly no way I was going to ride the last 3 kms again so bike in the back in the van and drive smoothly past the group as the Ford Transit powered, ok spluttered up the steep road to the hotel. Now the hotel was a bit basic tonight but a substantial meal was devoured, a few beers and a couple of bottles of wine were consumed and this night there was some very tired teddies and the boys Matt, Clive, Henry. Mike and our driver Paul had gone to bed by 8:30 now the boys who had ridden I could understand but I suppose the effort needed to write a 100 texts in a day must have worn poor Paul ( I love you Julie) Streeter out. Hopefully tomorrow would be a bit of an easier day in the office. Statistics today 5:56 hrs riding, 85.12 kms, 2587 Metres of climbing, average speed 14.3 kph, Max 54.1 kph, Average hrt rate 121 , max 151BPM
Posted on: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 09:03:35 +0000
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