Martin Diessner’s blog

Yeah – what a weekend! Over 40 Celsius on Sunday, which made the race organizers of the Argus MTB Challenge stop the 55km route even before the cut off time!

Had a fantastic time – and good results on Saturday, but Sunday definitely a hard time, including a flat tyre 1km before the finish which made me carrying the bike on my back and running through the line instead of pumping up a new tyre!

Thanks to Jason for sorting out the Dirty Dog Sunglasses mountain bike shirts and for us being the official race team!

Just found out my results from Saturday (Sunday was not so great!) – 41 overall from almost 1,000 participants

Martin Cape Town, Sports

This is my 5th trans alp crossing on a mountain bike, and the second after the 2007 trip that I did with Kai and Thomas.

This time, I bought a Garmin Oregon 300 navigator and downloaded maps and mountain bike tour data from www.gps-bike.com so that we can maximize our cycle time on single tracks and avoid as much asphalt as possible.

Garmin Oregon 300

The track data from gps-bike.com was not as good as I hoped, and on one occasion we even had to cycle 25km tar road instead of the promised single track. The data is not as easily combined as they describe on their website, and the protected rich track data that they use a pain in the a** to load into Google Earth or modify on your GPS.

Also, Garmin charges quiet a bit for their maps, however I managed to extract plenty of Open Street Maps and used the Garmin software to load those downloaded maps onto the Garmin device.

Overall, we had a great trip from Tegernsee in Germany via Pfitscher Joch, Limojoch, Valparola and Falzarego Pass, then heading up to the Rifugio Averau and Rifugio Passo Pordoi. From there we went via Porta Vescovo and Rifugio Bec de Roces to Baita Huette and Groedner Joch and via St. Ulrich / Seissner Alm down to Waidbruck and to Bozen.

Overall about 400km with 10,000 height meters and awesome weather. The height profile can be found below, and the whole photo stream is shared on Facebook and Flickr.

Height Profile of Mountain Bike Trans Alp Trip

Because of our dissatisfaction with the tour data, I decided to publish the GPS raw data (free of charge) for anyone to download from this blog – feel free to use it on your trip and to share any feedback with me via my Google Profile contact page.

• Full Trans Alp Garmin GPS route, track and way point data
• DAY 1 – GPX Data | DAY 1 – KMZ Data
• DAY 2 – GPX Data | DAY 2 – KMZ Data
• DAY 3 – GPX Data | DAY 3 – KMZ Data
• DAY 4 – GPX Data
• DAY 5 – GPX Data
• DAY 6 – GPX Data
• DAY 7 – GPX Data
• DAY 8 – GPX Data

Some of my favorite pictures:

Martin Sports

Last weekend we participated in the two Two Oceans marathon (half and full 56) and despite a chaotic start with overcrowded people we had a fabolous day.

Run was super slow (took 30 minutes for first 4 kilometers) but from Southern Cross upwards had a fantastic time.

Spent afternoon @ my favorite wine fram in Constancia.

Awesome family day!

Martin Cape Town, Sports Marathon, Robyn

Just thought I quickly plot the route map of the Cape Epic pro log that we road yesterday, and also upload some pictures of the event:

Here we go with more pictures

Martin Cape Town, Sports Cape Epic, Cape Town, MTB

It is assumed to be the toughest and most challenging mountain bike races in the world – the Absa Cape Epic presented by adidas. This year’s route change will see Cape Town as the start and also hosting the time trial Pro Log which will give every team its seeding time.

In 2008, I won a lottery entry for this event where entries are sold out literally in seconds. Unfortunately, due to work pressure and all the traveling last year, I decided to drop out and gave my ticket to a friend from the Atlantic Triathlon Club in Cape Town. Either way, got some friends from P.E. in town and had a chance to experience the Epic City with all the exhibitors and sponsors, and riders of course. I must admit the organization is fabulous, everything in perfect order and no stress at all.

Most of the teams are sleeping in tents during the 8 day race, some in Camper vans that are more comfortable. All the pro teams have their professional mechanics and masseuse with them – a must for such a hard track. The route consists over 700 km with over 17,000 height meters to be climbed up (and down) – definitely a demanding track with very technical single tracks.

The official website has live rider updates, interviews and all the latest rankings udpated online. Just saw that the founder of mountain bikes, Tom Ritchey, will be coming over from CA – awesome!

Today’s highlight was the riding of the pro log trail. Due to the fires in Cape Town, some parts of the track were closed, however we had an awesome time on the track up to Table Mountain and then declined from Kloof Neck over the pipe track back into Camps Bay. End of the 90 minute races – an ice cold beer in the pool

Below some pictures from today’s cycling:

Martin Cape Town, Sports Cape Town, MTB