21 Days to Go

Bonjour, Madams & Monsieurs!

It's time to blog again and update our situation for you. It has been quite a ride so far, i can tell you that.

Since we live in Finland where the snow covers the land for 5 months a year and summer is so short that once you get your shorts and t-shirts out of the closet it's already about time to start looking for your snowboard again, the actual riding outside can be started no sooner than in April. Of course it is possible to ride with spiked tyres on icy roads to get some hours, but it's dangerous and cold and quite hardcore in my opinion. Also the amount of mountains in Finland (zero) is not really ideal for preparing to ride over the alps. So already in the beginning of the project we knew that we have to make the basic work on the indoor bicycles and XC skiing, but we would only have three months to get used to riding outside. I actually counted my hours of training and i've gotten to over 200 hours since the beginning of the year. It's by far more than i've ever done, and it might just be the most i'll ever do within six months. Ville's been a bit sick for a couple of weeks but he's been back on a bicycle a few times now and he'll be ready in three weeks time. (Him being sick actually might just balance our speed a little bit since he's the strongest of us).

Anyway, it's been tight schedules and tricky timings for both of us, but we've gotten stronger and faster and there hasn't been any major setbacks on the way.

I was so concerned about my own training for Transalp that i booked a June holiday spiced up with mountains already early in the beginning of the year. So last week became the heaviest but at the same time the most relaxing training week i've ever done. The climate in Southern France can not be compared to its finnish equivalent. I thoroughly enjoyed it and took all the advantage of it by riding for six days straight, almost 24 hours and 500 kms all together, reaching nearly 9 kms of vertical climb. That's a lot for an office monkey from Finland, i'd say. The landscape was incredible and training-wise it was nearly perfect. Only "nearly" because i didn't find any summits higher than 1km. But i guess that amount of training will help me a lot next month, anyway.

I rode only on roads, but i used my mountain bike with semi-slick tyres. I did actually visit one sand road which seemed to go to the peak on one mountain, but seeing a lizard approximately 20cms long i turned back very, very quick. Not that it was about to attack me, nor was it very dangerous-looking blood-wanting venom-spitting half-dragon, but i just got scared (wimp) and decided to stick with the safe tarmac roads for the rest of the week. I saw also two snakes, one was a tiny small one, running away from the road (snakes don't run, what do they do?) and the other one was very big, but also very flat since a car had taken the best of him. Still scary in my opinion.

Transalp-wise I always thought the climbing would be the hardest thing to do, but little did i know. Climbing is actually the easy part. You begin the climb by standing up for a while, getting your legs moving and finding your own rhythm. Once you've got it, check that your hear trate doesn't raise too high (to the red zone) and settle with your own speed and fairly high cadence. Just keep spinning your legs 'til you reach the top. That's it. Simple, huh? Coming down is the hard part. Once you've reached the top and you don't have to move your legs anymore, the bicycle starts rolling downhill and you know it's gonna be fast and easy for the next 10kms or whatever. That's where it gets scary. You get a bit of a lack of concentration because of the easiness compared to never-stopping-spinning in the uphill. That's when you also notice the temperature's gotten a little chillier and you take a big sip from your drink before enjoying the view from the top. The next thing you realize is that you're going down the hill faster than the cars without knowing what's waiting behind the next bend. Your legs feel heavy if you don't keep them moving, and if you do, you'll go even faster. The concentration here plays a big part. You gotta keep focused, otherwise you might end up in a ditch few hundred metres below, where no one will ever find you. If you're scared, you'll stay sharp, i think. That'll make you slower, though, but if you roll down the hill without worries and just enjoy the speed and the beauty of the nature, it might come to a sudden stop.

My scariest moment became on a second last day when i found a new "Col". It was a bit cloudy on the top, i saw it already when i started  the climb, but i didn't realize that the last 200 metres of vertical (i.e. 3kms of road) where gonna be inside the clouds. I couldn't see 30 metres ahead of me and it was so damp i felt the rain even though it wasn't raining. Of course it was colder, too. Climbing was ok, but a little scary because of the grayness, but once i turned around going downhill i started shivering from the cold. All my gear was wet from the humidity and sweat and now the wind began to dry it all up. Sharp turns, a car once in a while got me more scared than the little lizzard a couple of days earlier. Made it back below the clouds with gripping my handlebar harder than ever and pushing the brakes gently but firmly. Felt a lot easier when i got back to the flat land and had to start pedaling again. Gravity can be a bitch sometimes.

I said earlier there hasn't been any major setbacks, but i'd like to mention a minor one. I crashed three days ago. Small mistake in the woods but i went down pretty hard. First thought in my mind was: "Transalp!?" I hit the ground with my left side, so my hip got bruised, knee, elbow and ribs still hurt a little. Nothing's broken (i believe i'm not such a tough guy who'd go on as usual with broken bones) but i had actually forgotten how much crashing can hurt. I never forgot the fact i might crash, but the actual pain and the scare of breaking something caught me as a surprise. Again, gravity can be a bitch.

It's midsummer in Finland and all the people have left the towns and gone to the countryside so the roads are nearly empty and quiet. Time to take down the road bicycle from the wall and go for a small ride...

We've got three weeks to the start of the race and four weks to the end of it. I'll try my best to update the situation in the middle of this all.


Take care, everybody, and enjoy the summer!


-riku

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