Blauenkönig

This was the first Blauenkönig, a new event in the Schauinslandkönig hill climb series. The other events look to be fun events, with categories for inline skates, tandems, bike trailers etc. Today had one tandem, but mostly serious hill climbers for this steep ascent.

Very impressed with this event. I thought it would be a small scale local club hill climb with some guys with stop watches, but instead this turned out to be a very professional and well attended race. Closed roads from Badenweiler to Hochblauen was unexpected, this of course meant no customers for the restaurant at the top so they must have paid them off for the day! Even the timing chips were the most advanced I've seen, flat as sellotape and fixed to the back of the number plates.
We even had a starting ramp with 2 guys holding the bike, one guy counting down "zwei, eins, null" and announcing all the riders as we set off. Once off the start ramp, its immediately up the steepest part of the hill, and this climb is steep all the way to the junction to Hochblauen. The final 3km are still steep, but I couldn't move up another gear before 2km to go.
9 km, ca. 750 Höhenmeter tells the story of the climb. I made it up in 34min 49s, 27th position out of 130.

Nice day out, and we continued the day with a ride to Neuenweg, Tegernau, Endenberg.

Pragel & Klausen

Hopefully the summer is here to stay, so while its hot in the cities, its time to head up and over the mountain passes. Starting from Arth-Goldau, I was soon cycling beside Lauerzersee towards Schwyz. This is a very nice section, certainly not worth changing trains and arriving in Schwyz. I passed the Victorinox factory here, then followed the signs to Muotathal.
A wide, glacial valley leads to base of the first test of the day. This route is difficult to follow on some maps, but I'd read enough to understand that the route is at least surfaced in its entirety, and so I'd had the idea for todays loop for sometime. The west side of the Pragelpass is much steeper than the east, it seems most bloggers prefer the easier climb, but I like to get this not-so-short and steep ascent out of the way then have a more enjoyable descent eastwards. The first 4km from Muotathal is bottom gear and long sections of standing, but the scenery is more than enough to give you the boost you need to climb this beast.
The descent eastwards is gentle, and leads down to the unbelievably picturesque lake of Klöntalersee. The water is turquoise and heavy waterfalls are falling into the still water, spectacular.
Descending further and turning right through Glarus, the road begins to climb, but its a false start to the main climb of the Klausen pass. The pass really starts at Linthal with a couple of cobbled hairpin bends. I was very glad to see the end of this small section, but my first fear was that this was another climb like the Tremola, the old Gotthard pass! Luckily not, but I will have to face those cobbles next month in the Granfondo Sangottardo.
The climb is 23km and average 5.7% from here, so a long way to go ! Theres a respite between 9 and 15km as you pass through awesome scenery, the sound of cowbells the whole stretch as you begin to see the final 7km stretch up and away in the distance.
Over the top, and on the descent I bascially shat myself as the road hugged the edge of a glacial pit, which must have dropped several hundred meters as a sheer cliff. I stopped here, telling a Swiss mountain biker how extreme this scenery was, but he just laughed and said this is normal. But he did warn its a different place at the weekend with many motorbikers racing past.
After carefully getting past this terrifying section, its a long long way down through Altdorf and to the banks of Lake Luzern at Fluella, I got the train from Brunni today.

Basically I can't begin to describe how spectacular this route is, from start to finish, every km breathtaking in very different ways. And this is just my first high mountain pass of the summer......

Les Trois Ballons

205km 4300m Ascent (Master course)

My first sportive of the year was the closest Grand Trophee event to Basel, up and down the Vosges mountains starting from Champagney, a small town to the north east of Belfort in Alsace. It starts at 7:15am and when I registered I had the idea of just getting the first train to the event. This would have worked if the event was in Switzerland, however public transport in France was not going to allow this.
Instead, I picked up the mobility car share vehicle at the very early time of 4am with Falk of ChezVelo Tuesday night fame, and drove up the very quiet motorway to arrive at Champagney before 6am, but we were still not first inline to register.
It was obvious early on that the large field of around 2500 riders were from Belgium and Holland, they could have been noisier but seemed to outnumber the French at times.
The race itself started with an extremely narrow track to the start gate, which was good to spread the riders out, but it took me 15mins to get to the start line. Then out along a decent road beyond Plancher les Mines. This town had bike memorabilia strewn by the roadside such as paintings of riders like Jan Ulrich weathered by time, many painted bikes, white and yellow jerseys of various materials proves this town and area has enjoyed celebrating past Tour de France and hosting many other cycling events over the years.

Here we had a sneak look to the right up the steep ascent to Planche des Belles Filles, but we were marshalled to the left and off on a 190km loop before we would have the pleasure to cycle this Alpe d'huez of the Vosges.
The first climb, and first Ballon, was the Ballon de Servance and I found this to be a very cramped climb. So many riders, narrow road I had no room to overtake and was quite boxed in at times. The descent is incredibly rough, anything loose was being thrown off riders bikes such as water bottles, spare tubes, glasses, food, and already the first puncture victims were replacing tubes by the side of the road.
At Thilot the ride splits into the riders on the Senior route turn right, I have to say this was poorly marshalled as there were no signs as to who was going right or straight on, just a few marshals waving to the right. I had to confirm with another rider that we were still on track for the senior course.
A second climb warmed us up after the chilly first drop, then on to my favourite section from Kruth up to the Route du Cretes. This is my kind of gradient, I was matching for speed and chatting with a slim Belgian as we ascended through the forest.
A strong side wind blew at us on the Route du Cretes, tugging at my deep rimmed wheels and forcing the pelotons to ride in echelon formation. The Grand Ballon is reached after 100km, so just halfway! This is the most spectacular scenery on the route, but today I was so happy to get off this mountain, out of the wind and into the warm valley.
We knew Ballon D'Alsace would be another big test, but en route was another hill, Col du hundsruck proved to be more troublesome than one would think for its small size.
Climbing the Ballon d'Alsace we pick up the riders from the half distance event, but they're all going strong (or am I getting slower?) and so theres always a large number of riders on the road to small a small pack between climbs. I found 4-5 riders would work well, we would sweep up many lone riders until when we looked back, there were ~30 riders in our wake, all happy that we were still feeling fresh and heading towards the final climb.

As we turned right this time from Plancher les Mines, a Dutch man said "This is the beast." Its only 6km, but it doesn't let up and after 200km there was nothing to do but hit the bottom gear and grind towards the finish line. It really does feel like Alpe d'huez, the first 3km are painfully steep, then less so but luckily this is all over in a relatively short time. It will be good to see the Tour de France finish here next month, this stretch could be enough to put some daylight between the overall contenders and the chasing pack.

I finished in 8hr 7min, 25.24km/h average speed, so well below the gold standard of 9hr 20min. Falk also had a great ride, 8hr 33min, so excellent considering he only knew about the event on Tuesday night and signed up on the morning!

I finished in position 720th out of 2403, ok I know there are many much faster riders than me, but this seemed relatively low after a decent effort. In Etape du tour last year I finished  890th out of 6415, so this might suggest the field for this event is of higher quality. Also I had a poor start, near the back, so of course the faster riders only get faster ahead on the road. Must try to get a better start position in La Vaujany.

In general a tough ride, 6 climbs so lots of ascent and some very bumpy descents through the forests of the Vosges. It was never going to be as scenic as a high alpine sportive, but its longer and as much climbing as any of them. Chapeau to all who completed the challenge today.

Tips for next time - seem to be all car related:

• Try parking halfway between the finish and the start, theres loads of land and space here. That way, its downhill to the start, and its downhill from the finish!
• Drive via Altkirch, avoid the peage at Belfort which is less than 3 euros but will cause everyone 20-30 min delay.
• Don't take a mobility car on a 200km journey as the price per km is huge!

*** Edit *** next years route (2013) is completely different!