July 13th: Bruneck to Schlanders

At breakfast, we looked out and saw blue sky, mixed with some clouds. Arturo overhead the inn-keeper telling some guests that despite the weather forecast, it would be sunny all day. Given that he'd lived here all his life, he probably knew a lot more about the weather than the weather models, and so we elected to ride.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

The Pusertal bike path rolled along nicely, and one of the first things we discovered was that the next town, San Lorenzo, looked almost as pretty as Bruneck did. No regrets though, since the Messner Mountain Museum was for both of us an interesting stop. Most bike paths meander around and add meaningless elevation to the ride, but the Puster bike path was so much fun and did a lot of descending in the direction we rolled in, so I didn't mind so much. As we approached Muhlbach, someone honked at us and Arturo stopped. I'd dropped my wind jacket from my pocket as I'd ridden, and a kind motorist had seen it, and then followed us to give it back to us! Taking the cue that clothing does not belong in pockets, I quickly stuffed it into one of my saddlebags' side pockets before continuing.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

The Pusertal bike path ends in Muhlbach, where it connects with the bike path heading to Sterzing to the north, and Bolzano to the south. I was tempted to ride north to use Jaufenpass to get us over to Merano, but one look in that direction convinced me: it was definitely raining, and raining very hard in the mountains. Today, for better or worse, had to be a valley day. Looking south into Bolzano valley, we could see low clouds hanging on the hill sides and occasional rain, but nothing looked like it threatened the river-side, which is where we were headed.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

Near Schabs, I noticed that the bike path noted 12km to Brixen, but the main road was only 6km. My intuition told me that when there's a huge discrepancy like that, the road's a much better bet, so we pulled off the bike path and followed the road. The road traffic was still very light on a Sunday morning, and we were almost immediately rewarded by a straight-shot terminal velocity descent into Brixen, where we had no problems picking up the bike path again. Bicycle touring really does require all of your faculties to be involved: you can't just blindly follow bike paths, GPS tracks, or road signs. You constantly have to be alert and observant to choose the best route. Your body has to ride the route your mind has chosen, and even your digestive system has to work to convert all that food into motive power. There's no other activity that combines all this into one package and I love it.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

The ride along the bike path back into Bolzano took us past familiar territory, leaving us time to muse and ponder the imponderables. For instance, why was it that adventure cycling is dying out? We thought it ironic that it's 2 forty-somethings doing an adventure tour here, while the younger people we'd met or knew over the years weren't the adventurous types we'd met when we were younger. Then I realized that for Arturo and I, the younger people we'd met in recent years were all self-selected: these were the people who'd actively chosen a big established company as a safe, secure place to work. Doing that when you're in your 30s and have a family to support might be a responsible decision. Doing that when you're in your 20s, during the years when you're most able to take risks indicates that adventure and uncertainty frightens you. So if we wanted to meet young, adventurous people, we'd have to find different venues to meet them other than a big established company that's well-known as a "safe choice" to have on your resume. By contrast, Arturo and I were both first generation immigrants with experience in startups. Touring didn't bring any kind of uncertainty more severe than what we'd each chosen for ourselves years and years ago.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

We rolled into Bolzano too early to stop for lunch, and elected to ride out of Bolzano. I found another short cut using a secondary road that was none too traffic'd and we cut another 6km off the bike route before finding the bike path towards Merano. At Terlan, we took a short break from the bike path to try to find lunch, but ended up only at an ice cream shop which served paninis that came out of a sealed bag and had to be heated. Back on the bike path, I finally realized that we had perfect conditions to teach Arturo the basics of pacelining, and I gave him instructions on how to draft, and how to behave when drafting, including some now little used etiquette bits, such as shouting "On your wheel" when you first latch onto another rider's wheel. With that little bit of minor instruction the miles flew by and we were soon in Merano. From Merano, the bike path wasn't very well marked, so we ended up using our GPSes set for Lagundo. That road finally joined up with the official bike path at the Dam near Toll:
We admired the dam for a while under what had turned into a hot sunny day with 80 degree temperatures. The contrast was pretty incredible, as we could clearly see rain on the mountain sides. After a bit of time on the bike path, we realized that this was part of a long-distance bike path from Landeck to Trento and beyond. Tourists of all types were coming the other way, in the downhill direction, and Arturo would later remarked that we saw more bike tourists on this one day than we saw on all the previous days of the tour. The Adige bike path was well marked, and attractions in each town were advertised on signs throughout the route. We also saw the train running in both directions, so clearly the strike did not affect this route. Not that we needed the train that day: the riding had been easy, and the weather was holding.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

I had hoped to make it all the way to the foot of the Stelvio today, but at Schlanders, Arturo's foot started hurting. Cycling is a repetitive activity on the foot joints as well as the knees, so at the first sign of injury you have to stop. Otherwise, the injury will exacerbate quickly and you'll lose the rest of the tour. Schlanders was the first place TripAdvisor failed us, since it told us about a hotel that was more than 20 minutes away in the wrong direction, and we wasted time looking for it. Fortunately, a local told us about a local B&B that was more than acceptable in both price and quality of food. The B&B's staff ooh'd and aah'd appropriately when told that we'd come from Bruneck, and then when we said we were headed to the Stelvio the next day, they carefully explained to us that it was going to rain tomorrow, but the day after would be ok.
Come what may, we had gone nearly 100 miles that day (my GPS registered much less because of a problem with the wheel sensor magnet), and ate appropriately off the fixed menu.

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Review: The First 20 Minutes

The First 20 Minutes is a book about exercise physiology. It's been a number of very good years for exercise physiology since more and more research has been published about mind-body connection, and there's any number of fads and myths, which this book does a great job of debunking.

For instance, take barefoot running. It's been touted as the solution for everything related to running injuries, but it turns out that for instance, the natural walking position even when barefoot is heel striking first, not stepping on the balls of your feet. Interestingly enough, there's research showing that barefoot running doesn't solve all running injuries, and in fact may create different injuries, so choice of running footwear or lack thereof is largely a matter of personal taste.

The section on stretching is well known --- hopefully by now everyone knows that stretching before exercising is actually bad for you. What's oddly interesting is that she found research showing that most athletes overdo the warm up, wearing themselves out before the actual event.

Reynolds does a good job describing the difference between fitness and health, and points out that 20 minutes of exercise a day is all you really need to maintain health. But if you want to change your body shape, then you have to do quite a bit more (an hour a day). Worse, exercise isn't a great way to lose weight, unless you do a lot of it. She notes that vigorous intense workouts exceeding 800 calories burned do indeed give you an "afterburn", where your appetite gets depressed and your metabolic rate increases even post workout. Unfortunately, life's not fair. Apparently, this does not happen to women.

Ever wondered why women sweat less than men? This book has the answer. There's also sections on why more repetition at a lower weight is the preferred method for strength training now, and how exercise affects your brain (old hat to folks who've read Brain Rules), and how exercise affects your DNA at a deep level, provided you start early enough (in your 20s). There's also how exercise affects kids as well as older people (hint: it's good to start early, while the baby is in mom's womb!). All in all, the book is comprehensive, even more so than Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights.

I do have a few complaints about the book. First, Reynolds doesn't like cycling, so she gives cycling short shrift --- there's very little tips for cyclists that are useful, and she quotes an old study showing that 60rpm is more efficient metabolically than 90rpm. Anyone who does any amount of cycling knows that metabolic efficiency is unimportant in cycling --- cyclists are already the most efficient land animal on the planet. It's about endurance, and it's far easier to push a light weight for a long time than to push a heavier weight for the same amount of time.

With those criticisms aside, though, this is a great book and worth reading. Recommended!

Day 28: Wald to Rattenberg

 

We awoke once again to sunny weather, with dry roads and no trace of the rain from the night before. The climb from Grubl immediately begins a 17% grade to the next plateau, but after that the road poses no real challenge for cyclists. After all, the climb was only to 1531m, and Grubl was already at almost 900m. The sights were beautiful, and there was relatively little traffic. In fact, we hardly knew that wee were near the summit when we suddenly came across a giant ski resort (Almdorf) and then hit the intersection with the main road where the new pass intersected with the old pass.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

After all the previous descent, the Gerlos pass descent was definitely relaxed. We first got to a flat section with beautiful views over the Speicher Durlassboden. After that, there's a short descent that had no braking to Gerlos (1471m). From there on, the descent was so gentle that we had to pedal until the series of switch backs just above Zell Am Ziller where the road finally lost all of its elevation down to 600m in just 5km. With that kind of grade, the tandem easily kept up with auto traffic and we only exited the main road to Zell am Ziller in order to find a super market for lunch.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

At the supermarket, I heard some campers ask the checkout clerk for insect repellent, and the checkout clerk said, no, they were all sold out. That clearly meant that we were not staying at Zell Am Ziller, and after a quick lunch we moved on down towards the Inn Valley.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

As we got lower and lower the weather got warmer and warmer. The bike path did not follow the Ziller at all, which meant that we got as warm as the surrounding towns, which were unshaded. Near Schitters, the bike path intersected with a lake with ice cream, and we stopped for some ice cream but it did not cool us down at all! We found the Inn river bike path just 10 minutes later, but somehow got turned around and headed up the river instead. When I realized my mistake and turned around, I found out the reason why. The intersection was so complicated that the city of Strass had put up a signpost explain how to navigate it:

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

It was clearly not a sign to be read at cycling speed.

The Inn River bike path, unlike the Ziller bike path was shaded, and it was very pleasant to be riding in the cool shade next to the river. We stopped at Brixlegg and contemplated searching for lodging, but two cyclists came by from the other direction and said, "We just came from Rattenberg. You definitely should check it out. It's the smallest city in Austria." That sounded too cute to pass up, so we headed down river and came into Rattenberg, which was indeed a very small and cute city of about 400 people.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

It took far too long to find the tourist information center, but when we did find it, the lady there was extremely helpful. She pointed us at a bicycle friendly B&B called Haus Sonnblick, which was run by the most pleasant person imaginable. She was friendly and very helpful, giving us pointer after pointer as to where to go.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

The town proper was very touristy, but it had a grocery store where we could buy fruits, a bike club that met at 6:00pm for a ride, many restaurants, and a castle from wwhich we could see in both directions, towards Innsbruck and towards Kufstein.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

It was still so warm that when we finished dinner and came back to the house, we each had to take another shower to cool down, so it was just as well that we had had a short day.

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