In St. Johann

And so the saga continues . . . On Friday, I hopped the early train from the airport in Geneva to get to St. Johann. In typical fashion, little time was left when I arrived at the station before my train was departing. Becca has "drop off" timing to perfection provided you don't mind running a bit. I jumped on the first train car I came to since I didn't have any real desire to push my bike bag all the way down the platform. Unfortunately it was the first class car and I had a second class fare. The conductor was nice enough to sell me a half priced upgrade rather than make me schlepp my bag back, one car per stop with only a minute at each station.

When I made it to the Zurich main station where I had to change trains, the conductor on the next train basically started laughing at me and said I would probably run into trouble with my bikes because there was construction on the rails requiring a bus transfer from Bludenz to Landeck . . . poop!

I went straight to the bacj of the line of buses to find one with an empty cargo bay for my giant bike box. After an hour of so on the bus, we made it to Landeck where the entire fleet of buses unloaded onto the train, what a mess! Most of the seats were reserved, but I took my chances on one that was reserved from Innsbruck to Vienna. Fortunately, the party with the reservation never showed. I also met a group from Venezuela, also going to St. Johann for the week. Between the four of us we had no problem shuffling the bikes side to side depending on the location of the platform at the next stop.

Finally we got to St. Johann, eight hours and two border crossings later. When I got to Hotel Fischer, the front desk informed me that they were able to switch my reservation to a single room in their other hotel (a four star joint according to someone) as opposed to my Ferienwohnung with space for six. This would save about 20 Euro a night and it included breakfast with the option of dinner each evening as well. Done and done. It also put me around the corner from Mike, Nanci and Samantha.

I put the bike back together and headed out for an afternoon/pre-dinner ride up to Schwendt, a town in the middle of the road course. For dinner that evening, we had pizza from a place that I give Mike endless grief for having as a favorite because it is essentially the Olive Garden of the Tyrolean Alps, but pizza is fairly universally impossible to screw up.

By Saturday, my luck with good weather had run out and it rained pretty much all day. Mike and I headed out for a few hours in the muck and grime, riding from St. Johann to Fieberbrunn, St. Jakob, and back around through a few more of the villages tucked away in the hills. With the Radweltpokal (cycling world cup) race the next day, the evening was spent cooking pasta and homemade meat sauce and trying to dry out our shoes, gloves, etc.

I woke up the next morning to sunny skies and rapidly warming temperatures. I didn't race until 1:30 so by then it was the perfect temperature for racing. When I went to pick up my number, there were only 62 people registered in my age group, but by race time we had more like 100+.

Either I had better position at the start of the race or people didn't show the usual pre-race stupidity as in years past resulting in early crashes. A few riders tried to get something going early, but everybody followed just about everything. An Italian got a small gap and after a small effort I found myself in nomansland between a rider off the front and the rest of the field. I put my head down, bridged the remainder of the gap and got to work as part of an ill advised, early move with the hopes that a few riders would bridge without dragging the whole field with them.

The two of us covered the ground between Gasteig and Schwendt quickly, establishing a reasonable gap over the chasers. We made it through Kössen, still out of sight and onto what is the second half of the time trial course. We were both taking fairly long pulls and remained clear through Kirchdorf to the base of the small climb to Huberhohe. Midway up the climb, we could see the field coming up on us. Our 40k effort was done since it was the entire groupan not the small bunch I was hoping for.

The second and third laps were much easier since I was just sitting in at that point. A couple riders would try to attack, but they would either do so from the front of the field or their effort would be so short that it wasn't even worth upping the speed to follow. Unfortunately in the last 10k a group of 12 got a small gap around the same time a group consisting of 10 or so of the 40 Italians in the race decided to slow up at the front. This gave the front group enough of a gap to stay away to the finish. With just over 2k to go, I jumped clear of the pack and put in one last effort to try and keep myself higher up in the results. I stayed clear upto the 1000m mark and then got out of the saddle for one final push. So close, but not quite enough . . . I got caught by the sprint inside of 100m to the finish and ended up 39th on the day. The results showed only 60 some finishers. A good number of riders fell victim to the couple 11% pitches on the course.

Shortly after the finish of my race, I saw the lead group in Mike's race coming to the line. No shocker that Mike was in that group. A casualty of timing, he ended the day at 12th after essentially leading out the sprint.

With the first day of international racing in the bag, I cleaned up and headed to the hotel's beer garden for a Radler (half beer, half lemon soda . . . very refreshing on a warm day) before dinner. For dinner, we headed to the Gasthaus Dampfl for an authentic Austrian dinner of Schnitzel, Spaetzle, and other specialties, followed of course by Gelato.

Today was pretty much a rest day. I headed up the hill to watch the end of the Bergpokal (hill climb), Mike took second again this year, and then headed out for a couple hours on the bike. I spent the rest of the day wandering around town, eating Bretzeln, and watching people go by. Quick photo dump of the scenery:





One more day of prep before the time trial and then hopefully I will have more to tell. Bis später . . .