Stage 2: St. Ulrich am Pillersee/A – Kitzbühel/A
Vertical distance: 1810 meters ascent, 1907 meters descent
Horizontal distance: 33,20 Kilometers.
Right after the start in St. Ulrich, the route takes a steep climb up the Mount Kirchberg before the long downhill section toward Pillersee Ache begins. The second climb of the day leads up Mount Reisenberg Kogel and then, after a short downhill interlude, to Alpenhaus at Kitzbühel Horn, where the finale will be a descent toward Kitzbühel.
Mountain Jam
What on earth is a "mountain jam"?! Well, nothing else but a traffic jam - in the mountains. Right after the start in St. Ulrich, only roughly after 2km, there was a steep, narrow mountain trail... and the whole pack had to queue :-) as you can see in the picture. Not too bad at all, as it prevents from a too fast start :-) Do you see the rocky stream in the left part of the picture?! Some dudes were "short-cutting" the trail and passed a long part of the line and all they earned was a tremendous booing of all the other participants, who waited in the line... quite amazing, how unsocial and unfair people can be. I encouraged one of the cheaters, when I was shouting: "Yeah, sure - go ahead and overtake! We are just lining up for the bus here, don't even worry about us!" *hahaha* a good laugh and quite good mood in the field, after the enemies had been spotted and dissed!
Sun
The ascent up to the first peak was quite steep but ok, then a nice descent to the foodstop and another pretty long - but very sunny! - ascent up to the Kitzbühler Horn. We made quite some elevation gain today, I have to admit that it hurt... but that's just the opening for that, what is about to come during the next days... In the picture, you can see Harald (white cap) and Daniel from Team Polar Germany. And, as you can see - good mood :-) The weather was so much better than the day before, when it was raining like crazy and we had to do the final kilometers in the pouring rain, passing the Pillersee. But now - sun! Great... what we did not know at that time was the forecast for the coming days...
Anyway. We managed to pass both peaks of the day without bigger harm and it was me being pretty much tired when entering the finish-line town of Kitzbühel. The last 3 km I did not feel like running any more... too tired. So we were just walking... but no problem and maybe good - as we got stronger and stronger during the week. Maybe we saved the essential power here, when walking in Kitzbühel :-)
High Society
Kitzbühel is an odd place. And not my favourite place in the Alps, too. It's all about seeing and to be seen, posh & expensive boutiques and show-off. Besides that, the mountains surrounding Kitzbühel are suffering a lot, because of the winter sports... every alpine skier should be obliged to visit K is summer, in order to see the damage and harm, which is done to the mountains by mass-tourism-skiing. Not nice at all. What WAS nice is the fact, that Ruben parked our campervan directly behind the finish line :-) 10m from the line to my bed. Cool. Great job by our preofessional caretaker Rubi :-)
In the evening we went to the pasta party somewhere downtown Kitzbühel... and as we were so tired, we decided the first time (and not the last) to skip the whole winning ceremony haza-baza and briefing for the next day. In sum, that allowed us to sleep at least 1.5 hours longer. Not bad. And weatherforecast for the next day was ok... but for the following days it sounded already pretty bad... longest leg waiting for us tomorrow: 46km and 2300 Hm. Outsch.
Rock´'n'Roll,
Janne
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