Chris Timm
Hans Christoph Timm

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Before the start in Mittenwald Crossing the finish-line in Riva

During the first stage from Mittenwald to Reith im Alpbachtal

Descending through the snow from the Pfundererjoch (2568m) during the third stage from Sterzing to Brixen Finishing stage 3 in Brixen

Larry Westney and Mike Cotty riding for the Cannondale Chaingang

Now in its fourth year, the adidas bike TransAlp Challenge for the first time allowed tandem teams to participate. Would tandems even be able to master the grueling course? Would they make it up the long climbs, would they teams be able to carry their long bikes across the hike-a-bike- sections, and would they survive the technical descents? Needless to say that I wanted to be among the first to try!

Since I got a new Tandem Technology full-suspension bike only a few months back, I knew I had the right bike for the demanding course. Finding a stoker for the week had been more difficult, especially since I only received the spot ten days before the start. Thus I ended up riding with someone I had never seen before, much less ridden a tandem with. However, Kirsten, my stoker for the week is a very experienced stoker, having ridden and raced several thousand miles with her husband. As we got to Mittenwald the night before the start we were informed that a second tandem would be among the 370 participating teams, a Cannondale Chaingang team composed of two strong men. O well, winning the tandem mixed category is usually more prestigious anyway...

First stage: Mittenwald (Germany) – Reith im Alpbachtal (Austria); 85.14 km and 1984 m of climbing

The morning before the first stage Kirsten and I went for a first short ride together to get the bike set up for her. We both immediately felt comfortable on the bike together. Good! Entering the hardest MTB race of the world with someone we didn't know had been quite a risk, after all.

The first stage was rather uneventful. Since it didn't start until noon it contained the least amount of climbing of the entire week. Two long climbs, but no very technical sections. The descent from Plumsjoch was announced to be very tricky, as it was very steep, contained lots of switchbacks and the surface was mainly loose gravel, but we didn't have any problems. We finished the stage in 6:42h. The best team came in after 3:19h.

Second stage: Reith im Alpbachtal (Austria) – Sterzing (Italy); 118,29 km and 3624 m of climbing

Getting up at 5:30h the next morning we immediately realized what would make this week so hard: Both Kirsten and I are well used to spending 6 or more hours on a bike, but since the pros arrived so much earlier every day they also had much more time to relax and recover between stages. Add to that the fact that they had brought their own massage teams, mechanics, and slept in hotels, while we slept in school gymnasiums and other camps, it was no wonder we felt worse every day.

The second stage was to be our hardest day: Both climbs of the day contained extensive hike-a-bike sections. The first was so steep that even without a bike hikers would have had to use their hands to make it up the trail, while the second one was not very steep, but almost 6 km long! Tandem bikes are great for riding, but not really meant to be carriied for several miles over rocky terrain!! We lost over an hour to the teams around us just in that second hike-a-bike part. That was of course much more than we had gained in the long flat road section through the Ziller valley between the two climbs. We arrived in Sterzing after 12:51h, while the top team had finished after 5:18h.

Third stage: Sterzing – Brixen; 68.1 km and 2318 m of climbing

Hurray, just one real climb today - or so we thought ... until Uli Stanciu, publisher of the sponsoring BIKE-magazine and the person responsible for the course informed us in the race briefing the night before that the highest parts of the Pfundererjoch would be covered by snow. We would again be carrying our bike upwards for several hundered meters, but in addition this time we would also be carrying or pushing it back down! See above for another photo.

The day was a lot better than we thought it would be, though. By now we had gotten to know most of the teams around us, so we had plenty of people to talk to. Everybody admired us for tackling the course with our heavy bike, and everybody admired Kirsten for being brave enough to not jump off on the downhills. Also, almost everybody had come to realize that trying to stay with a tandem on downhills is a bad idea, even in technical terrain. A few riders who did try to stay on our wheel crashed when they were thrown off by rocky sections or missed a turn because tandems brake so much better. Nobody had believed me when I had said that whoever wanted to ride in our draft on the flat sections after the downhill would better have at least a seven minute lead on us at the top of the climb - everybody we wizzed past on the downhill now believed us. On paved parts of the downhills we would often ride above 80 km/h even though we never tried hard to reach high speeds. We finished the day without problems in 8:05h, quite a bit after the first team which had come in after 3:22h.

Fourth stage: Brixen to St. Vigil; 61.71 km and 2629 m climbing

After three days on which we had thought about whether we would be finishing the week at all, today was going to be a good day: Much shorter and - more important - with the best dinner of the entire week waiting for us the finish! I remember very little from the course, probably because we felt so good and rode so fast. We even had enough power left at the end of the ride to attack most of the last 200 m of climbing into St. Vigil out of the saddle, reeling in quite a few teams. St. Vigil gave us a great welcome. They went out of their way to provide the entire crowd with the best food of the week, not just an ordinary pasta party with long lines, but lots of grilled chicken, potatos, fresh vegetables, cake and fruit salad. What made the stay there even more exciting was the language situation. The valley surrounding St. Vigil went back and fourth between Austria and Italy several times in history, so German and Italian are official languages. To make matters even more interesting, a third language, the local dialect Ladinic, an ancient Romance language spoken only in the immediate vincinity of St. Vigil is also an official langauge in the area. Talk about great job opportunities for translators! Add to that the many languages spoken among the racers (most participants came from Germany, but there were many teams from Greece, the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Austria, Italy, Great Britain, New Zealand, the U.S. and other countries), and you have a wonderful international mix.

We rode for 6:58h that day, still long compared to the 3:20h of the winners.

Fifth stage: St. Vigil to Alleghe; 78.61 km and 3220 m of climbing

Just look and the course profile and you'll know why this day hurt! I like rides with few long climbs. I don't mind climbing for several hours non-stop, but four climbs, and still none of it short enough to really be called short, that is not to my liking. The most interesting part came after the last climb though: The descent down into Alleghe proved to be a real brake test course: 1200 m of descending, and almost all of it on one long and technical single track path with lots of rocks made slippery from the slight drizzle that had started just as we reached the top. After four days of training together we were able to ride the entire course from top to bottom, but we had to use our brakes almost for 100% of the descent. Anybody with the least bit of knowledge about brakes knows this spells trouble, especially since at 190 kg (420 lbs) including the bike we are not exactly a light team! I have experienced several brake failures on my Santana hardtail tandem with a rear Formula disk brake on much less gruesome descents, so for most of the way down I had been expecting something to happen. Thus, I cannot say I was really surprised to feel the right brake lever give a few hundred meters from the finish.

What had happened was that the rear hydraulic line had melted off right at the brake caliper, causing the fluid to leak out. Now before you condemn the brake let me tell you that plenty of teams on single bikes experienced lots of brake related problems that day, too. Heat induced flats on bikes with rim brakes, evaporated pads on bikes equipped with disks - this descent is certainly the most gruesome test for a bicycle's brakes I have ever encountered. Team Chaingang, using the same 2001 Gustav M disk brake as we did, did make it down without problems, but they were able to ride much faster as it had not yet started to rain when they got to it.

Even if it did fail in the end I am still mightily impressed with the brakes on our tandem. Had I known the course before I certainly would not have felt that it would be possible for a tandem team to make it down even as far as we did. And now I know that with just minor modifications (small cooling fins for the hydraulic fluid used by Centurion and Porsche on bikes with composite rear swingarms) my brakes will be able to withstand any downhill I choose!

Still, the problem remained: Where would I find a long Magura disk tube for our tandem? The race mechanics couldn't help, but luckily, after some searching around in the team van team Cannondale found what I needed. Thus I was able to get the bike to work again in time for the next stage. Since we had been on the bike for 9:52h already (the winning team finished the stage in 4:30h), I was still wrenching long after most others had finished eating dinner. I had some cold pizza shortly before I went to bed and hoped that the brake would survive the next day.

Sixth stage: Alleghe to Imer; 78.30 km and 2480 m of climbing

The brakes survived, as did the rest of the bike. Surprisingly, we did not have any other mechanical problem during the entire week: While the Cannondale tandem experienced three broken chains during the first stage alone (and three more during the rest of the week), the Rohloff Speedhub protected us from such problems. We did have three flats in the rear from hitting large rocks, but that was due to my stupidity: Knowing that about half of the couse would be on paved roads, I had decided to bring only 2.1" rear tires (Schwalbe Hurricane GX, and Black Shark for stages with more technical descents), leaving the fatter 2.25" Schwalbe Big Jim I normally ride in rough terrain at home. Unlike other teams, who had to fight with maladjusted gears, or derailleurs getting caught in the spokes, or breaking rear spokes, we never had any such troubles. The perfectly symmetrical flange spacing of the Speedhub let our bike survive the course even with only 32 spokes in the rear.

Today, again the course included an interesting mix of paved roads, gravel double tracks, and tight single track trails. The many rocky sections made us be happy for being on the full-suspension tandem. We would have wished for a motor on the long climb to the top of the highest mountain of the day. It was so steep that even the medical team on motor bikes had problems making it all the way to the top! We finished in 7:07h, again more than twice as much as the winning time of 3:19h

Seventh stage: Imer to Folgaria; 113.40 km and  3541 m of climbing

Look at the course profile: Looks like a good stage for a tandem, wouldn't you think? Yep, that's what we thought, too. Unlike the section in the Ziller valley on day two, however, the long flat stetch between the two climbs was not a large road going through a valley, but an assortment of narrow bike paths winding their way up and around, criss-crossing the valley. Lots of tight turns, and lots of bridges, so we never were able to get our bike up to speed and ride at an energy-saving pace. Thus we arrived at the bottom of the Kaiserjägerweg rather exhausted, only to find that this beautiful tiny road was not only ultra steep but also baking in the sun. We did make it all the way to the top, but had to realize that course designer Uli had left "the best" for the end of this long stage: Tiny single track winding its way through a forest like a maze, again up and down, back and forth. It felt like we were circling the same mountain over and over again - not exactly what you enjoy doing after a long day of cycling. We were completely exhausted when we reached the finish after 10:17h. Even for the pros it had been a longish day: 4:58h.

Eigth stage: Folgaria to Riva del Garda: 68.42 km and  2256 m of climbing

Just one more day of riding and we'd be enjoying the view over Lago di Garda! Nobody was going to quit today! We didn't even complain about the terribly long and sluggish lines at the pasta party in Folgaria that night, we were just happy that we'd make it through all the way. However, the race briefing again warned us that the next day would not be easy: As an apology for the more experienced riders, Uli had included some of the most difficult trails in the Lake Garda region, the Pianaura trails. The first downhill towards Rovereto had already been difficult, but the second and final one was truely awesome - or horrible, depending on your bike handling skills. I had promised Kirsten not to risk anything on the last day, and a week before that would have meant walking the entire downhill. After a week of riding through the Alps, however, we were good enough to ride most of the trail! The trail was rarely ever wide enough to allow passing other riders, but when it was we yelled "Tandem coming" and showed the others that tandems really can survive in the rough. I had shortened my forks travel from 130mm to 110mm before the race, which greatly improved its stiffness. On this last day, however, a bit more travel would have been nice. I can't wait to do it all again next time I am down at Riva with my new Rond fork with 140 mm of travel.

The last day turned out to be our best day. We rode for 7:58h (compared to 3:32h for the winners) and came in with 6 mixed teams behind us!

What a week! I did my first bike race when I was thirteen, and in the sixteen years since I have never suffered more on a bike! For several days I was not sure we'd make it all the way to Riva, but decided to quit thinking about the finish and concentrated on the next crank revolution instead. Would I do it again? We'll see. Team Chaingang proved that tandems can be fast even in the most gruesome terrain: They finished 45th out of 198 mens teams making it to Riva). We proved that regular riders on a tandem can keep up with other regular cyclists on single bikes. I would love to ride it again with my regular stoker Tino, or possibly on singles. We'll see!