I did manage to get out for a short trip after tea – to the Pestkapelle at Jörgebichl – this is just about 3 miles uphill from Nassereith. Of course, when I got there it started to rain, but it was all downhill home, so that didn’t matter too much. This is the view from there taken on a sunny day. It was late afternoon in the autumn, so Nassereith is in the shade at the back, Dormitz is at the front over the foto.
My planning seems to be making good progress now and I have starting making “to do” lists. I’m getting rather excited.
Until yesterday I hadn’t been cycling since last Friday apart from my usual session on the exercise bike, partly because of bad weather and other commitments and partly because my younger sports-colleagues had advised me not to do too much training (“you don’t train for a marathon by doing a marathon!”). And after all, last week’s tour was really my self-set test, which I passed with flying colours!
Yesterday was Wednesday. That is normally our ladies cycling night (Aktivclub Nassereith). As the weather didn’t look too promising I turned out to be the only one cycling and didn’t want to go too far afield either, so I decided to do a trip round the village – amazing it was 15 Kilometres and really enjoyable!
This morning I donned my cycle pants and tricot with the intention of cycling to Imst, where I had an appointment with the local newspaper, only to find out that it had started to rain! It wasn’t just drizzle, but really heavy rain and although I thought I should maybe train for bad weather too, I decided to go on the old exercise bike, then have a shower before going to Imst by car. Now I’m sitting here at my computer while the sun is shining – do I go for another trainings run, or not?
The new Nokia N97 mini is absolutely amazing – I can leave my camera, my torch and my MP3 player at home and have a phone and a Sat-Nav. I’ve also signed up for Quick-Office so I can put some of my Excel spreadsheets onto it. The sportstracker is absolutel fantastic, but needs a lot of battery, so I’ve ordered a spare one.
I have already tried to publish a post from my new N97, Hopefully it will work this time!
I did say I was cycling from my HOME in the Tyrol, but this means going up the Fernpaß, which is a VERY busy road. The alternative would be the old Fernpaß, which is now part of the “Via Claudia Augusta“, but this stretch of the mountain bike route is marked black (= extremely difficult), which I do not think is a good choice for a fifty-eight year old woman with luggage. Many of the younger people use the shuttle, which runs on this busy stretch, so I don’t feel guilty about cheating a little bit, by starting off at the top of the Fernpaß. This is still part of Nassereith and I’ll have plenty more climbs, before I get to the lower regions in France, so please forgive me!
Despite a bad weather forcast, the sun was shining yesterday morning, so three of us set off on our annual cycle trip, which should have been 3 days in the Ötz Valley and which we had aready postponed from June due to bad weather then. We cycled for about 2 hours, by which time it was pouring with rain, with no hope of improvement (it is still raining now), so my husband came to collect us by car and trailer. If this happens to me in August, I may postpone my trip by a day or have a day off in between, but I really intend to go through with it. Please keep your fingers crossed for me, that it won’t be quite so bad!
Bacause of the bad weather, I spent most of today working on elevation profiles. This is a rather difficult task and you can’t get it really true unless you cycle it first or find someone else’s information. On the internet you do find altitudes of towns and some villages, but there may well be hills in between!!!
I finally managed the magical 100 Kilometers (in fact 113 = 70 miles) and over 1700 meters = (5600 ft.) elevation. I had originally intended doing 3 passes – Hahntennjoch, Namlos & Fernpaß , but I hadn’t reckoned with the midday sun. Despite having set out at 7 a.m. , I reached Stanzach at 1 p.m. without stopping for lunch. As Namloser Sattel is completely without shade I thought it would be rather foolish to go that way, so I took the longer way round through the Lechtal, which was very pleasant. By the time I got home I’d been in the saddle for 9,5 hours (having had to shelter from a thunderstorm I was out of the house for over 11 hours) and fell asleep immediately after dinner! But I definitely feel that I have passed the test!
Here is the second half of the trip, recorded with my new N 97 mini.
Yesterday I went the long “Tschirgant” route, via Telfs – 70 Kilometers, 4,5 hours in the saddle. For some reason I felt more tired than after the two longer runs I did before!
So I had a day off training today, just did a short run round the village with the luggage rack and panniers on, to try it out and fetched some Tyrol-stickers to put on the panniers.
Then I did a bit more planning – looking up altitudes on the internet – and made my first profile!
My new Nokia N97 Mini also arrived yesterday, so I have been investing quite a bit of time in that.
I spent most of today writing to newspapers and planning. I have put a bit more detail on the route. I went to do a trainings ride this evening – uphill through the woods – , but gave up because of the horse-flies! I had some great news yesterday. Anna Weingraber is going to accompany me on the last leg of the jouney!
Ich habe ein großteil des heutigen Tages damit verbracht, Zeitungen anzuschreiben und Detailplanung zu machen. Den abendlichen Trainingsfahrt über Niedereben Richtung Aschland musste ich wegen den Bremen abbrechen. Gestern habe ich eine gute Nachricht bekommen – Anna Weingraber wird mich am letzten Tag begleiten!
I just did a trip over the Piller – a round trip of just over 96 Kilometers (60 miles). I had hoped to reach 100, but despite a detour to visit a friend it wasn’t quite long enough and when you get home, you don’t feel you want to cycle round the village just to make the magic target! However it was 1250 meters (4100 feet) of elevation and six and a half hours in the saddle – not too bad really. I set off at 6:30 so that it wasn’t too hot for the climb! I had a nice experience – met a lady with saddle bags (you don’t see many ladies doing long trips alone), who seeed to be travelling at my speed, so we got talking and ended up cycling about 20 miles together!
Heute habe ich wieder eine längere Trainingsfahrt (über den Piller) gemacht 96 Kilometer und 1250 Höhenmeter – 6,5 Stunden im Sattel. Ich wollte eigentlich 100 Kilometer fahren, aber es waren einfach nicht mehr und wenn man heimkommt, will man auch nicht ein paarmal ums Dorf fahren, nur um die magische Zahl zu erreichen!
Today it is exactly one month to my planned departure date and I am getting quite nervous, when I think of all the things I’ve still got to do and what else is in my calendar! I definitely need to write a “to do” list soon. At the moment I seem to be doing more planning than training. I did cycle yesterday, but not such a long run as the last two, as I decided to join my friends who were going “round the Tschirgant” – that is a mountain near here – a 54 Km. (just over 30 mile) trip . As the temperatures are in the 30s at the moment, I didn’t feel too guilty about not doing more!
Heuete ist es nur mehr 1 Monat bis zu meiner geplanten Abfahrt und ich werde ganz nervös, wenn ich daran denke, was ich noch tun muss, und sehe, was noch alles in meinem Kalender steht! Ich muss unbedingt bald eine Liste schreiben, was alles zum Erledigen ist – das glaubt man gar nicht . Momentan scheine ich mehr Zeit bei der Planung als mit Trainieren zu verbringen. Gestern bin ich schon geradelt, aber nicht so weit als die letzten zweimal, weil ich mich entschieden habe, Freunde auf ihre Fahrt “um den Tschirgant” – 54 Km. zu begleiten. Da es momentan über 30 Grad hat, habe ich deswegen kein allzu großes schlechtes Gewissen!
Sue4Don 