Transalp Stage 7: Trento to Arco – 53.6km and 2042m climbing The Transalp 2016 ends today, and with it almost a thousand people go from facing the simple struggles of pushing bikes and bodies over the mountains back to the complexity of every day life. We will all take away different memories from the final […]
Transalp 2016: Bormio to Mezzana
Transalp Stage 5: Bormio to Mezzana – 86.32km with 3073m climbing. Stage 5 is the queen stage of the 2016 Bike Transalp and we were suitably scared about how we would find it. Our first question this morning was whether we would even be able to start today after Chris had a bout of tummy […]
Transalp 2016: Scuol to Livigno
Transalp Stage 3: 72.30km and 2598m of climbing Stage 3 takes us to familiar territory. Both times Chris has done the Transalp he has ridden from Scuol to Livigno and we have returned here for training camps/holidays for the last 3 years. We have come to know and love the trails around this beautiful part […]
Transalp 2016: Imst to Nauders
Transalp Stage One: 88.85km, 2960m climbing Chris and I were just saying yesterday as we were stuck in a traffic jam in Germany on the way to TransAlp that we are much more chilled out about bike racing than we used to be. Years ago we would carb load on pasta the night before and […]
Bike Check: Chris Pedder’s Open 1.1
Chris Pedder is a Brit (for the time being) mountain biker currently living in Luxembourg. When not investigating very small, very cold things in his day job as a theoretical physics researcher, he likes to daydream about mountain bike rides in proper mountains. Whilst Luxembourg doesn’t have many of those, it’s a lot closer to […]
Karla Boddy’s Transalp challenge
Karla Boddy is one of the top UK domestic road riders and now also a rider manager for the UCI registered Drops Cycling Team. She is taking on the challenge of the Transalp this year but not just for the hell of it like the rest of us, Karla has a more personal reason for […]
The Transalp training camp
In July, Chris Pedder and Rachel Fenton will be tackling the BIKE Transalp as it travels from Austria to Italy, over the Alps in seven days of glorious mountain biking. But first – training camp! Over the years Chris and I have done a lot of cycling together. You might argue that neither of us […]
Rachel Fenton’s analysis of XCM Worlds
Anyone who follows me, or MarathonMTB on social media will be aware that my World Marathon Championships didn’t exactly go to plan. Around 30km into the 60km race my rear wheel bearings randomly failed. The second descent was pretty hair raising anyway and with my wobbling wheel I felt really unstable on the bike. I […]
Ariane Kleinhans: the Swiss mountain goat
Ariane Kleinhans has stood on the top step of the Cape Epic podium, and many South African and Swiss marathon races since beginning her international racing career in 2010. You would think that someone with this racing calibre would have people running around after her at the World Marathon Championships. However, the understated marathon specialist […]
Bike Check: Rachel Fenton’s Open
Take a look at the Open hardtail that British racer Rachel Fenton will be piloting at the 2015 XCM World Championships. In contrast to professional racers who have access to a whole stable of bikes suited to particular courses, we privateers have to pick one bike to rule them all (unless we are lucky enough […]