kitzblitz' long and hard ride

Where I’m from

Part III: Long and hard

In 2007 Johan and some other world famous celebrities from happymtb rode Paris Brest Paris (1200 km) and I followed it feverishly on the internet and was incredibly impressed. PBP is the holy grail of randonneur cycling and is held every 4 years. Already while I was following them on internet I decided that that’s what I’d do 2011.

This meant getting used to real distances. So I joined in the standard randonneur, brevet series of 200, 300, 400, 600 km rides around Stockholm. We in KBCK had a ball. These rides were great. And I seemed to enjoy the 600 km distance the most; it always included riding overnight and finishing early in the morning. I absolutely loved it. The ups and downs, the laughs, the complete exhaustion and suffering when energy reserves were at their lowest and for me always the slight problem that I have a tendency to fall asleep on my bike. Then finishing. Its magic. It wasn’t until after I’d ridden a few of these that I remembered my earlier dream (nightmare?) that I’d end up roadcycling in Sweden; how right you were Nostradamus.

My long distance riding so far has had three clear highlights. In 2010 I had this really clever idea to organize a 320 km ride around Mälaren. We had done this a few times. In nice weather. Usually in winters we chose the shorter, 200 km route, the legendary, KBCK inspired “Tour de Ötzi”. Well mine was in December, and it was Ötzi XL. Hopefully some from Sweden will also follow this rambling, so here’s the story of Ötzi XL 2010. After (I think) 9 started from our clubroom at Lilla Barkarby at 9.30 pm after a beer or two, some dropped off already in Stockholm. It was cold.  After Södertälje, where we missed the closing time of the the petrol station we were hoping to warm up in, there were only Gunnar, Nils and me left. I will shamefacedly admit that I was so cold that I only continued because the other two did and I felt obliged to because I started the whole stupid thing. It was -17 degrees at times and the warmest was -10. We were out in that for 22 magic hours.

 

Gunnar, Nils and myself in a truly beautiful Swedish winter landscape

After this PBP 2011 turned up, which was more than twice as long as anything I’d ever ridden, so my goal was just to finish. With a “secret” vision of maybe finishing in under 55 hours. KBCK hired a minbius and we had the best road trip ever (through Belgium of course to buy some beers). The whole trip was like a party with a bit of a ride in the middle. A few of us finished in 51:36 hours, in about 60^th place out of 5000. This was KBCK's huge national breakthrough: PBP 2011 Swedish results . I felt strong.

 

John, Johan, Ari, myself and Calle trying to work out what we had done.
 

 

John and myself making sure we don't dehydrate when we get back to the hotel. Dehydration is very dangerous.

I guess I was on a bit of a roll, so why not register for Sverigetempot 2012? Anders (nypan): had said that in Sweden when planning a cycling summer you could either have a really nice cycling trip to Italy’s Mille Miglia, you could have a lovely cycling holiday on Mallorca or Gran Canaria, or you could ride Sverigetempot and become cult. I liked the latter idea. But this was scary. 2109 km from north (Riksgränsen) to south (Smygehuk) through the whole of Sweden. Ouch. This is a strange event that is held whenever anyone can be bothered to hold it. Luckily Sweden has Peter Tonér, who is unbelievable in his energy in arranging rides like this. Anyway, after a few glasses of wine one night my name was on the list. Swedish long distance cycling has become really popular which is fantastic and the list of 49 starters pretty much doubled the population of Riksgränsen when we met up there with nervous expectations in the end of June. This was a long story so I won’t repeat it here, but for anyone here who feels like reading it in Swedish here's my trip    

But of course you who read it here demand exclusive content so I will treat you to a portrait of myself in the metropole Hyltebruk (where we honestly in a whole hour didn’t find a single person). Feel free to hang it up on your fridge:

 

 

Gee this is fun. Great idea Toni!

Prior to 2012, RAAM-Gunnar held the record for Sverigetempot with 132 hours (although of course being a brevet ride IT IS NOT A RACE). Jonas and I rode it in 106:20 hours. Although we had both 96 (4 days) and 100 hours as utopian goals, we were of course unbelievably proud of this.

And I started to realize that being able to ride pretend fast, and pretty long, I could maybe ride long and hard as well.
 

Watch this space for what happened next J

/Toni