Happy Canada Day from the Tour TransAlp 2009!
Our start today was in Solden, the site of the opening round of the FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup.
(Profile here) Directly out of town we hit the major climb of the day the Timmelsjoch; 23km long with 1250m of elevation. We slowly ground our way up to the top, the last 200 to 300 meters cut out of the snow banks. Another world!
At the top our support team had their ghetto blaster blasting out “Oh Canada” and the entire “pre” feed zone painted up in the red and white.
Like good Canadians they had our water bottles embedded in the snow banks so that they were good and cool for the descent off the top.And oh… what a descent! 1800m over 25 km. Not a single hill to slow you down. Ripping around switch backs at the top and blitzing through km after km of snaky turns.
I looked at my speedo once and thought I didn’t want to know how fast I was going. It just went on and on. I don’t think I have ever had that much of a rush riding a bike. The ultimate high!Once to the bottom we leveled out a little bit and pushed our way into Naturns, the whole day taking just over 3 hours to complete.
This must be our rest day, tomorrow we start what I think is the crux 2 days of the race. First, over Stelvio (difficulty 194, Cypress is 76), and then 180 km day with 4 major passes including Passo Gavia, the site of many Giro I’talia memories. (Results here)
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