Towards the end of last year I started planning my yearly trip to Europe for my cycling holiday. My plan was to do the Salzkammergut Trophy A course with the aim to complete, which I failed in 2015. While looking around at other events, I noticed it was the 30th running of the Maratona dles Dolomities. I mentioned this in passing to my wife, who said that I should go and do both. So some quick investigation, and a charity place booked, I was ready. The main issue was getting a road and mountain bike there, so I decided to fly with the road, ship the MTB, and then ship back the road and fly with the MTB.

Maratona
I flew into Salzburg airport and drove down into Italy on the Friday. Saturday morning I was up early and set off up the passo Furcia to stretch the legs and get some practice in descending before the event.

On the day, it was a cool start with damp roads and a forecast for more rain. Luckily it did not rain again, but stayed misty and cooler. Everything started out well, with everyone riding nicely, until the second descent when everyone decided they owned the road. I saw a very close call with a very fast descending brit who almost took out a group of people going for a gap that was never going to be there. I have no idea how he managed to avoid them.

The Giau was a real slog. No talking, everyone just head down turning over the cranks.

And then on to the final climb.

After that the Muir dl Giat was dispatched and a drive on to the line for a time of 7:17. It was a good day, and enjoyable ride in Italy.

Grossglockner high mountain road
After that I headed into Austria and took a drive over the Grossglockner mountain road. I stayed overnight in Fusch, and the next morning headed up to Bikers Point, a 21km climb, gaining 1,698m and a great descent back down. https://www.strava.com/activities/630572632

Salzkammergut Trophy
Then the pain started. After DHL refused to deliver my bike to the hotel as I was not there (never been a problem before), I finally got my bike on the Wednesday. Unfortunately the box looked like this:

All the small stuff was inside a shoe box in the bottom of the box. This shoe box was mysteriously open, with everything lose, and one pedal was missing. On closer inspection, my bike was also damaged:

And according to them, the box was not up to shipping standards, so there is nothing they can do.

So the only option to take part in the ride was to hire a bike. I went around to a few bike shops, and Bikes4You in Bad Goisern offered me a Centurion 27.5 HT to hire. This was the best bike offered as the rest were just basic bottom of the range HT’s.

At this point, it was the only option, so I hired the bike with the plan on just seeing how I get on. If it doesn’t work, then that is just the way it is. The other fun part was the brakes were the wrong way round.

Saturday rolls around with a very early start to be on the line by 4:30 for a 5:00 start.

There was a forecast for some showers, which turned into some really heavy rain for most of the morning. The first 125km is made up of 3 loops back to Bad Goisern, with some shared and most different sections. The climbs are just a lot steeper than expected, and never seem to let up. The descents have some technical, rocky sections, which were quite slipery due to the rain, plus I was on an unfamiliar bike. I found I actually had less walking down than in 2015 when it was bone dry, and overall I kept up a good rythm once I had got used to the bike.

Then there is a long flat secion next to the lake to the 150km point. I was cruising along there nicely when I checked behind me to find about 12 wheelsuckers. In the middle of this section is a small climb, which turned out to be a race to see who could get the top the slowest as no one wanted to move to the front. Some choise words were said and eventually a few other guys came to the front.

Then come the Hallstatt Salzburg climb. 591m in 3.5km, avg 17%. My focus here was to just keep moving (Had Dory in my head the whole way up), and ride when you can.

After that there are 2 more climbs, the first of which was my low point on the ride. 711m in 7.5km, avg 9%. After this there is a long descent with one more climb of about 400m and a descent to the 192km point. This was were I was stopped in 2015 due to a massive storm in the valley. This year the weather was fine, so I continued on. I had to switch to using Strava on my phone to record the rest of my ride as my Garmin was almost out of battery, but the rest was pretty plain sailing, a few small climbs, but other wise just a relief to be done.
So 211km, 7119m climbing in 15:32, 404th position.

Overall I am glad I have done the Salzkammergut Trophy, but I don’t think I’ll be back. It is a real challenge, something that I am proud of achieving, but to me it is not the type of ride to do every year. It is just too long, too hard, and I think there are plenty of other rides out there to go and ride in different parts of the world.