209km doesn't seem 'that' much on an entry form. Especially when you're feeling chuffed with yourself after dawdling round a flat 12 hour course at Donnington. Besides it's in July, the Austrians are great at organising big events like this and if you're going to do a european marathon, do the biggest, most infamous one right?
So here I am on the startline of the Salzkammergut extreme marathon at 5am astride a brand new Fuel EX 9.9 bike from my temporary hosts and press trip arrangers Trek. Their racing legend and all round top bloke grins at me as lightning provides the only illumination beyond the cake and fear filled registration tent. Old 'wise' words cycle through my cerebellum trying to calm a body that would much rather be in bed. Old Skool Karrimor race hero John North always said "If you're cold on the startline, you'll be right in the race". My own clothing experience told me a Howies base, a race shirt and a Gore Tex jacket was enough for any sub zero commute let alone a summer ride in Austria. Especially when the terrifyingly jagged course profile says the first bit is all up.
From what I can see from the lightning flashes I've been going up for an hour and seventeen minutes before I reach the top of the first climb. In bottom gear. Not flat out, but firm enough for a 209km race. Worse still I'm cold. Turns out that factor 30 suncream and skinshorts aren't perfect apparrel for a 1degree top out temperature with wind and rain turning to snow squalls. 17 minutes later, I've doubled the distance covered but now I'm properly cold, I've upset lots of riders by daring to overtake on the screaming, swerving fire road descents and my morale has turned to mush as the trail creaks upwards again. Who cares if I'm 10% into the ride, I'm stopping for an energy bar. That gets me as far as the feed station at least, where banana pieces, gingerbread and a ham roll brighten a dawn that's so leaden and grey it makes a bad day in Blaenau Ffestiniog look like the Bahamas.
Over the top of the second peak the rain is still hammering down and lightning is ripping round the rocky terrain, but freezing fire road descents turn into super technical woodsy singletrack. Spiced up considerably by torrents of mud and water ripping down and across them and the fact that apart from lightning flashes it's still essentially pitch dark. While superlight hardtails with V brakes and semi slicks at 70psi might be perfect for hour long fire road climbs they're less than ideal for some of the most technical race descending I've ever done. Cue some terrifying closing speeds and er imaginative and hope filled overtaking lines as the Trek plummets past other riders loud enough to make them squeal louder than their brakes. I'm sure I could have learn't a lot more colourful German language too, had I not been concentrating so hard on braking points, cornering lines, off camber carving and trying to work out the hell was coming out of the murk and spray next.
Still the sheer adrenaline (and some more cake, gingerbread, bananas and cheese and ham rolls at the next feed station) has warmed me and my enthusiasm enough so that I actually stop shivering by 10 minutes into the next climb. Even better, it's only 40 minutes long, and if I grunt a few sections I manage it all in the middle ring! Seriously, I'm never going to complain about a Welsh fire road climb ever again.
Another even crazier storm washed, white water rapids foaming over rocky sections descent means I'm genuinely enjoying myself at 30 miles in. I must be as I ride straight past the sign that tells me it's only 2km back to the chalet complex where we're staying and I could get a proper breakfast and a sauna. If I'd known that's where my partner in grime Trek pro Travis Brown had already headed I'd have probably followed.
10km later after a flat out big ring spin down through stunning too high to see the top of cliff edged gorges and I'm properly cursing the weather. This would be a hard, but utterly stunning ride in the right conditions but now I'm a shivering wreck again. Snow wash turning trickles across the trail into raging tyre grabbing torrents as waterfalls burst off cliff edges high above in freezing curtains of spray. I'm shivering so hard I spill two cups of Powerbar drink all over myself before I get the third one down at the next feed station. I'm swearing through chattering teeth about the fact that there's a Buff that could warm my bald nut sat in my bag back at base and that Ryan Air's baggage allowance is so low I left my Gore Phantom jacket at home. I'm just over a third through but I know I've already burnt too much energy failing to stay warm to finish the event. A German rider comes up looking concerned. "Your lips are very blue, I think you should stop." I nod in agreement and ask when the course next cuts through the race base of Bad Goisern. "60km, two major climbs" he says grimly. My chilly little race coffin shivers shut with the impact of this final nail. Saddle up, man up and hope to god there's another climb soon.
Shivering enough to look like a stickless Slipknot drummer I grind upwards for a full twenty minutes before enough warm blood comes through my arms to stop my hands rattling on the bars. I haven't been able to shift with my thumbs for three hours now and as a couple of people grind past, silent and sodden I couldn't care less. Skittery gravel makes it impossible to stand and stomp but my legs wouldn't manage it anyway. Just as the sky seems to brighten the lightning comes back from a brief break, right overhead and with rain like concrete reinforcing rods. It's so vile I'm actually giggling now, wary that hypothermia is probably tip toeing just behind me as my Garmin toggles in and out of 'auto pause' mode as my pace slips below walking speed.
Then suddenly a shoal of brightly coloured riders flash across the skyline. We're back on the 50km course and for a while I'm pulled along by the tide of short course enthusiasm, back in the middle ring and jostling for position until suddenly they turn south for home from the next feed station and I'm directed out into the freezing fog on my own again. It's the same descent as the first one, very fast, very, very cold and now I can't trust my hands to brake how I want them too. Just as I want to lie down and curl up it carves onto more uber techy singletrack and I'm alive again, flashing past riders who appear to be stationary in the slurry like mud, hiding big boulder patches and slick sections of bedrock that I just have to trust my luck and velocity on.
As we kick up again, Herr Blue Lips tells me I'm a crazy descender, I laugh and say I'm not so fast up the climbs. He smiles, agrees and winds his way up into the rain of another vertical tarmac and gravel mix.
The next couple of hours is thankfully a grim, half remebered series of snapshots. Hugging a huge pan of heated powerbar drink at the last feed station. The look of concern on marshalls faces as I shake violently next to another victim who's only weather gear is a bin liner. Stumbling up almost too steep to push grass and rock singletrack as the climbs they say will take half an hour takes an hour and twenty minutes. The holler of joy at the top, feeling decidedly hollow as I realise there's another ten minutes to go. Trying to rewarm totally numb hands on a fire halfway down the final, fantastic descent to Bad Goisern. The bitter dissappointment of pulling off track at the bottom to have my transponder removed by an official as though he was breaking my sword in surrender. It had taken me 8.5 hours to clock 110km and 3500m of climb and descent and I knew finishing was no longer an option, but doing myself serious damage definitely was.
Shivering back the last 2km into town though I find that the race was being turned back just a km beyond where I jacked it in. Snow on the final ascent and increasing numbers of exposure and hypothermia struck riders had forced cancelation of all but the 50km event. It lifts my spirits a little and soup, showers and a sauna stop me shivering after 3 hours. Above all though I want to come back. I want to try this stunning, epic in every sense race is like in the right conditions and I want some more of that gingerbread cake, because it turns out Lidl don't sell it over here.
Anyway for more pics of the event and a full review of the bike, check out What Mountain Bike magazine issue 100. For more details on how to put your head in the biggest but most beautiful pain cave available check out
www.salzakammergut-trophy.at