My folks are coming out this weekend, so I took Friday off work in order to get in a big ride before they come. As they will be arriving around 5pm on Friday it gives me plenty of time beforehand to put some more vertical metres in the cycle training bank.
Last weekend was a fair amount of climbing - more than 2,000m. On Friday though I will aim for more than 3,000m, especially as some of my friends training for the Marmotte also did a ride with 3,000m of vertical climbing last weekend. It is strange to think they managed that in and around Monmouth, Wales as there are no mountains there, just hills. But little hills add up and they must have climbed a lot of them.
The advantage of course of being near to the Alps is that 3,000 vertical metres can be achieved in 2 normal mountain passes. And long sustained climbs give the advantage of being able to sustain a hard effort and also allow you to get used to cycling at higher altitudes where the air is thinner. There are a lot of passes in and around Andermatt and this is where the AlpenBrevet is held, which climbs 7,000 vertical metres over the full course. Unfortunately some of the passes are still shut due to their altitude, so it may be hard to find 2 open passes in close vicinity.
If I take the train though to the bottom of one of the passes, I can climb that and then cycle to the next pass, without it taking a whole day to complete (since I have to be back in Zürich by 5pm to meet my parents).
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