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One Giant leap: Ben Atkins' Giant Tour 2004
From his desk job in Brighton to the Tour of Germany. It's quite a leap for Gran Fondo lover Ben Atkins, who is one of a very lucky group of journos riding the Giant Tour, a toned-down version of the pro event as a guest of Giant Bicycles. Over the course of the next seven days, Ben will live and breathe the life of a professional cyclist, so follow him (albeit with a touch of envy) as he embarks on the experience of a lifetime.
Giant Tour 2004
Day 1 - May 29: Rendezvous in Amsterdam
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So here I am, what am I doing here? Cruising south on a Dutch autoroute in a luxury team bus, in the company of a group of assorted European journalists, with a trailer full of Giant bikes in tow?
Well, I'm here on the Giant Media Team, preparing to ride the Giant Tour - an amateur stage race run in parallel to the Tour of Germany - wondering what I've got myself in to.
The Giant Tour is a seven day, seven stage event, run along similar lines to a Granfondo or l'Etape du Tour, except in this case, once you've taken a kicking on one day, you have to get up again and do it all again the next! This is going to be tough; most of the stages are over 100km, with one stage - Stage 3 - a 130km slog over the Alps to St Anton in Austria. I can't help thinking that maybe I - or rather Cyclingnews.com on my behalf - have bitten off more than I can chew!
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The good news is that as part of the Giant Media Team, we're all going to be riding with the full weight of the world's biggest bike company behind us. They're providing the bikes, the equipment, the clothing, and putting us up for the night. The bad news is that with all that support, I'll have no one to blame but myself if I get dropped on the first hill.
So if this event is in Germany, what am I doing in Holland? Well, the headquarters of Giant's European operation is in Lelystad, near Amsterdam, so that's where we all congregated this morning from our various homes in England, France, Spain and Holland to be bussed in this opulent luxury the five hundred or so kilometres south to Karlsruhe, Southern Germany, where the race will begin.
What worries me more than the challenge of completing this race is the worrying prospect of competition - albeit friendly - within the team. As I look around the bus and observe the alarming absence of excess body fat where their love handles should be, I realise that these people obviously didn't have the same winter as me... They didn't spend their weeks working in Dublin, where the hardest climb is up to the Gravity bar in the Guinness Storehouse, where the principle of carb loading means eating more chips, and the sports energy drink is black and thick with a white head on top!
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Having said that, since Easter, when the evenings have become lighter, I had my training bike over there and have spent many an evening pounding as hard as possible around the relatively quiet roads of Phoenix Park. I'm not, therefore, entirely unprepared, but as I survey my team mates and the task ahead of me, I realise that I'm in for a tough week.
The Giant Tour comprises seven stages which are as follows:
- Stage 1 - May 31: Karlsruhe - Karlsruhe ITT, 23 km
- Stage 2 - June 1: Bad Urach - Wangen im Allgäu, 180 km
- Stage 3 - June 2: Wangen im Allgäu - St. Anton am Arlberg, 170 km
- Stage 4 - June 3: Bad Tölz - Landshut, 190 km
- Stage 5 - June 4: Kelheim - Kulmbach, 192 km
- Stage 6 - June 5: Kulmbach - Oberwiesenthal, 180 km
- Stage 7 - June 6: Chemnitz - Leipzig, 170 km
The most worrying of all the stages are Stage 3 which goes over two first category climbs, and Stage 6 which is a hilly ride through the Czech Republic, with an uphill finish.
Only time will tell if I'm up to it or not...
