Alpen Tour Trophy Pre Race

Share on Facebook  Share on Twitter

BY: TORQ Performance

Published: 31st May, 2011

After months of dreaming about a European road trip the TORQ Performance team has made its way back through the Eurotunnel onto mainland Europe. On Thursday Josh and I will take to the start line of stage 1 of the Alpen Tour Trophy 4 day mountain bike stage race. http://www.mtbfestival.at/

 

First off we stopped by Offenburg to watch the German XC World Cup and to do some training in the Black Forest region. The weather was perfect during the 3 days we were in the area with not a cloud in sight and temperatures reaching the 30's. Watching the World Cup was fun but it did leave me wishing that I'd raced. Dalby is definitely the best organised World Cup I've attended and has a good atmosphere but can't challenge the amazing atmosphere and awesome course that Offenburg offer. Beer flowing, hot dogs frying, commentators at each technical sector, and a compact course which is easy and quick to walk around for spectators makes this a race I certainly hope to ride again next year. Following a day riding the World Class Marathon loop which had some world class fireroad and not much singletrack we pointed the van south east to Schladming, Austria.

 

There was some world class views over the Black Forest

 

 Our home in Germany for a few days

 

After a relatively smooth journey (if you ignore the rather narrow German motorway lanes and random Police search) we made it to our destination. This afternoon we've spent our time exploring the town, having fun on some awesome technical steep trails right from our doorstep (including the World Cup downhill course which the stage race uses in a couple of days), and eating a pasta dinner for the third day in a row!

 

Over the next couple of days hopefully they'll be some video and photos to upload, keep tuned for the very latest news!