Team MotionBased

Ever have those hair-brained ideas that sort of lingers on the edge of your consciousness – lurking in the shadows just on the periphery of your everyday routine? The idea of an epic mountain bike stage race in an exotic locale had been one of my mental gremlins now going on 3 years, ever since I really started getting into cycling. Living in Seattle provided a great network of cycling enthusiasts many of whom had similar pseudo-dreams but were saddled with the usual work schedule, soccer games on weekends, in-laws over the holidays, etc. – so no one would quite commit to it other than saying, “Yeah - that would sure be fun!”

I hooked up with Evan Plews while racing on the OR Mountain Bike Series and he too shared that strange obsession with seeing how far you can push your body on a mountain bike. Better yet, when I asked casually, “So, ya wanna sign up?” – he actually said yes. Uh-oh.

The alarm clock went off at 2:55am. I scrambled, stumbled, tripped my way downstairs to log on to the race website for the 9am Greenwich Mean time opening of registration for the TransAlp Challenge. Apparently this was one popular event somewhere in the world because the website was continually crashing mid-way through the sign-up process, leaving our hopes as well as credit card numbers up on the air as I finally resigned myself back to bed at 6am.

The registration lottery began at the end of November with the first 500 teams selected from a mix of past competitors and early registrants. We weren’t on the list. Then they announced a series of two “special” lotteries to fill an additional 80 team spots that had opened up. The first came and went with no luck. Destiny or the gods of pain must have been smiling in that final draw because we were selected in the last batch of 30 teams to race at the 2006 TransAlp Challenge!!!

The race prep began to take on a life of its own as we brought more and more people into the fold, helping with everything from what to bring, how to train, where to stay, what gear we would need, navigation and most importantly how to fuel your body for 8 days of racing. The race truly became a team effort with individuals like Mike at Garmin / MotionBased who spent hours working out the courses so we could load them into our new Garmin 305 units for navigation, and Tom at Verge who has his art team working late to design, print and ship our jerseys in the nick of time, Mike at NoTubes tricking us out with the latest 355 rims for product development and the folks at Hammer all providing their nutritional expertise and assistance. Most importantly our wives bought off on the idea and committed the unwavering support and drive (as well as vacation hours) it took to push the planning forward.

Evan and I booked a full schedule of racing in the months leading up to the main event. We both competed in various OR MTB Series races, Mt Hood MTB races, NORBA Nationals Marathons and endurance races with our eye on coming into July primed for 8 days, 693KM and 72,000ft of climbing.

Activity Links Stage 1 - Fussen to Imst Stage 2 - Imst to Ischgl Stage 3 - Ischgl to Scuol Stage 4 - Scuol to Livigno Stage 5 - Livigno to Naturns Stage 6 - Naturns to Male Stage 7 - Naturns to Madonna di Campiglio Stage 8 - Madonna di Campiglio to Limone sul Garde 

Read on for Stage 1 - 8 recaps...