We signed up and as per usual, life got in the way of preparations. Luckily this was a much shorter race and both of us are in decent condition at the moment. We sent plenty of messages back and forth about training, gear and what to expect based on the only experience I have from last year. We did the packing session 2 days before we departed and were both excited and nervous for the race ahead.
Leaving the office early on Friday we both still had to take work calls from the car on our way from Lake Geneva to Lake Como. It was a long but beautiful drive through the alps but the closer we got to the race venue to worse the weather became. We arrived in Lecco in time to see the start of the longer 140km race and by this time the weather was pretty bad, and we were both very happy to not be starting that night with the others.
We headed off to get settled into the hotel for the night and then went looking for food. At the race last year, we had a team pizza the night before the race and that seemed to work for us, so this time we got pizza again. Team pizza the night before a race is going to be one of our traditions going forward. We had a very satisfying kebab pizza and headed back to the hotel to finalise our gear for the morning and get some sleep ahead of the long day to come.
The alarms went off too early for us, but the exact right time to leave for the race. We were dressed and ready to go in about 10 minutes and went down to the start to get prepared. The weather was still a bit crap from the night before, but it was not too bad really. We took out a couple of our layers of clothing and changed our planned starting layers to match the conditions. Did some last minute preparations on the bikes and bags and then waited for the start.
The race started with a briefing and receiving the maps. We listened to all the information and started working out our route and marking the maps. We had a pretty good idea where we were going for all the legs and also realised it was not going to be an easy day.
More last minute adjustments and then onto the line for the official mass start and the urban orienteering. We made a couple of minor errors in this stage, but we made it to the first transition in good time and headed out on the mountain bike leg.
This was a very tough stage with a lot of climbing. It was only 35km on the bike but with 1,523m of assent during the course it was very tough. We made the same mistake as a lot of teams and decided to go straight up the mountain at one point which cost us a bit of time and energy but when we got to the road climbing section our road cycling fitness came into play and we got ahead of a number of teams, only to be let down on the way back down the other side by a tunnel not being on the map which got us a little confused and lost a lot of the time we had gained.
Back on course and heading back up again, we went over another hill top that required carrying the bikes and had a single track of downhill mountain biking to descend. It was good fun, and it was clear at this point that Kristian had not done a lot of mountain biking before (in fact none). But we made it down with only one slow motion crash from me while I was looking at the map and not the road.
The last section of the mountain biking was along roads leading to the transition area, and about 2km from the end Kristian got a puncture. It was mostly flat and straight to the finish so he road it flat into transition. We go there, unloaded the bikes, ate food, drank coke and changed shoes and headed out as fast as we could to the trekking stage.
For the trek, we would have to go 24km and go up another 1,341m. And of course, it started with a large portion of this up in one go at the very start of the trek. We were making good time and by the time we got to the top of this hill we had already passed two teams that left transition before us. We were feeling good and happy with our progress.
As we got higher and higher the weather was getting worse and worse. It was getting colder, started raining and so got very wet. But we kept making what felt like good progress and kept making good decisions in relation to the map and directions. We adjusted our original plan a couple of time but managed to keep true to our plan pretty well and only making a couple of minor errors that didn’t really cost us time, just made us run a little further (but sometimes on better roads in the wet). We also spotted and avoided some of the trail junctions that were not so clear on the map/ground that would later confuse a few of the teams behind us.
We trudged our way down to lake and to the transition to the kayak and as we got closer to the kayak the weather was improving. We were worried at one point that we would not be able to see anything while kayaking but thankfully we could see clearly across the lake and there was only a light drizzle when we started. It was also here that we found out that we were in 3rd place (although we thought that was overall, not just our category) and this made us really want to get to the finish and not lose any position on the water.
We headed out onto the water and started making our way across the lake. Thankfully there was almost no wind, no chop on the water and the weather, while a little wet was not bad at all by this point so the 8km paddle would not be so bad. We were hurting by this point, I got a couple of cramps in the boat and we also had to stop in the middle of the lake to adjust the seats. We should have done that on land, lesson learnt. We kept looking back but could not see any teams catching us but didn’t want to slow down too much just in case.
When we got to boat landing, all that was left to do was empty the water out of the boat and carry it through town to the finish line. It was such a great feeling to make it to the finish line and to find out that we had placed on the podium was far better than either of us had thought was possible.
We ate our race supplied meal of burger and beer, order an extra beer each and a bowl of chip and then waited for the prize giving ceremony where we were presented cheese and more beer for our position. We were still starving so headed out after this to go and get a proper pizza, it was Italy after all, and some more beer, because we had certainly earnt it.
Feeling stuffed and exhausted we headed back to the hotel to sleep knowing that the following day we still had to drive back to Switzerland and somehow make it up to the wives that we left with the kids all weekend, including mother’s day. We hope the extra wines and food goodies we bought on the way home made up for some of that.
What a great race, well organised and another fantastic learning experience for us in the lead up to going back to Norcha in 2023.
Written by Michael Peberdy
Written by Krister Madsen on May 14th, 2022 9:50 pm #2