Transcontinental Race: Team 255 – two women between myth and feasibility

“If I’d had to give an interview in the first few weeks,
it would have been very different!” MARION DZIWNIK

A good time
One Tuesday in December 2018: The phone rings. “Hi, it’s Marion!” She’s just cycled through the Hamburg “Shietwedder” to the university. This is where Marion, a fixed gear crit rider in her early 30s, teaches maths. The previous weekend – almost half a year after the TCR– Marion and Johanna had given their first joint presentation on the race. Marion says that now is the perfect moment for the call.

“If I’d had to give an interview in the first few weeks, it would have been very different! I was mentally exhausted. Not at all positive. Just the racing in itself leaves you in an extraordinary state. Yes. I needed some distance. I needed to recover mentally.” After a break during which both returned to caring for their neglected partners and families, the lecture was their first joint public review.

“When I registered for the TCR, I think at that point the furthest I’d ridden in one go was 200 km, once. It took me the whole day, and I was done in at the end of it!” MARION DZIWNIK

No. 255: One Team. Two Novices.
Team 255 – Johanna and Marion – had started with completely different motivations and backgrounds. It was Johanna who suggested registering. The two have known one another for many years from various fixed gear crits.

“It’s night time. On a super narrow cobblestone pavement with a gradient of 25 percent, from one moment to the next, around 300 riders crowd onto the Kapelmuur. Plus luggage. The first people are already there. Someone loses something. It’s total chaos. You’re pumped full of adrenalin.” MARION DZIWNIK

Day X: No-one is alone on this first night
Geraardsbergen, 10 pm, July 29, 2018: “It’s night time. On a super narrow cobblestone pavement with a gradient of 25 percent, from one moment to the next, around 300 riders crowd onto the Kapelmuur. Plus luggage. The first people are already there. Someone loses something. It’s total chaos. You’re pumped full of adrenalin.” 300 people: everyone racing alone, and yet somehow all riding together. You’ll see one another at the checkpoints. Then go your separate ways again. You just don’t know – who will you see at the finish; who won’t be there? “That was the real highlight for me! I didn’t even know whether I’d survive the night!”

Three power naps. One crash.
Three 30-minute power naps after riding through the night, 420 km covered and 4,000 metres climbed on the first day: Team 255 powered their way crisply into the race, putting 1½ stages behind them. Then the second day puts a dampener on things. Both lose their concentration. Marion crashes. And there is nowhere for them to sleep in Switzerland. “We had to press on. 50 or so tough kilometres. After that, we settled into a rhythm a bit better.”

A day’s stage of the TCR is twice or three times as long as a stage on the Tour de France – but without any comfort or safety.

Self-organized
Self-organized racing means that the TCR riders put together their own route before the race, and plan their own individual way. The checkpoints are fixed at the time of application, eight months before the start, as well as the ten ‘keep it short and simple’ rules. Anyone breaking them is disqualified or given a time penalty.

Self-supported
Self-supported means that – regardless of what happens – you have to find a solution. Alone, and as quickly as possible. On a 4,000 km route, a fair few things can come at you: crashes, hailstorms, frozen fingers in the morning and searing heat in the afternoon, a broken bike, low water reserves and gnawing hunger – or even a pack of wild dogs?! To give some perspective: A day’s stage on the TCR is on average twice or three times as long as a stage on the Tour de France – but without any comfort or safety.

On the tracker 24/7
On accreditation for the race, all participants are given a tracker. It then records everything, 24 hours a day for 16 days. The famous TCR Dot-Watchers blog follows the riders, commenting and celebrating the crazy life of transcontinentalists on the road.

“Planning was a challenge. We analysed heat maps of bicycle satnavs. We immediately discounted any routes where no-one goes by bike.” MARION DZWINIK

Through the alps with no mountains. Route planning Hamburg style,
or: Such a mistake! 
Marion’s and Johanna’s route goes roughly like this: Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Greece. In short: 16 countries – 4 checkpoints – 15 days.

“Planning was a challenge. We analysed heat maps from bike satnavs. We immediately discounted any routes where no-one goes by bike.” Johanna and Marion also avoided any mountains. At least, as far as possible. Both live in Hamburg, a region not necessarily well known for its peaks. Both ride criteriums: races of generally short duration, zero climb and high speed.

Because of the luggage they would have to carry on the bike and their previous experience, both agreed: choose flat routes at all costs, avoid climbs – even if that extended the race by tens of kilometres. “That was such a mistake! My backside hurt so much – I’ve never been in such pain! Over that distance, two weeks at 260 km per day, sitting in the same position at 25 km/h on the straights, besides which it’s hot, nothing changes … “The mountain stages, on the other hand, were varied and great. “Small gears, good gear ratios, a slow pace – I was so surprised! The feeling in your body is completely different. You don’t get saddle-sore!”

Unlike Marion, Johanna had no problems on that score. Her preparation paid off, she benefited from the comfortable seating position and eventually got into a flow she could have continued in forever.

Re-planning and luggage
Only once did Team 255 have to spontaneously re-plan their route. “We ended up on a really stressful road in the Czech Republic: lorries and 30 cm-wide side lanes. After 20 km of that we rerouted and went over the mountain instead of along the straight road.”

Their misgivings over riding with luggage also quickly proved to be groundless. “My bike plus time trial attachment and water bottle holder weighed 9.5 kg; with luggage it was 13 kg. Add 3 kg of food and drink to that. Speaking of food: When I think of all the stuff we put away, it makes me feel ill.”

A whole pack of nuts: racing vegan and vegetarian
Johanna is a vegan. Marion is a vegetarian. Johanna took care of the shopping. Marion booked the hotels. “And our bodies always told us what they needed, and when. To start with it was nuts, then fresh food, at the finish I totally craved milk products. We had a really good flow.”

One of the rules of the TCR is that riders may only eat what they can obtain along the way. Most riders spend 14 days stuffing their faces with anything edible they can find along the way – even if that’s 13 doughnuts in one day. At least, that’s what they say.

On her test rides in advance of the TCR, Marion reveals, getting supplies didn’t exactly go smoothly. “In the Czech Republic, everywhere closes at 9 pm. We went to bed with growling stomachs. That’s no fun at all.” But the further south the pair rode on the TCR, the easier it became to fuel up. Restaurants open for longer than in the north!

Highlights
“The climb to Mangart Cesta, the highest road in the Slovenian Alps in the Triglav National Park, was super impressive. We started off in deep forest. It was dark, gloomy, spooky … we just rode into the clouds. Then the trees became fewer and the vegetation was suddenly like on Mallorca. We continue. We hit high alpine terrain. There’s snow up there. We take a photo, pack up and coast back down. Beautiful!”

Compromises
900 km before the finish at Checkpoint No.4 in Bielašnica / Bosnia, the enormous time pressure and stress became an issue for the pair. “I wanted to get the whole thing over quickly – Johanna was more considered!” Their compromise: more kilometres per day in the saddle – but less stress. The plan worked: On Day 15, Meteora, Greece, Team 255 puts a stamp in the last available field in the brevet book.

The whole race doesn’t have to be completely epic. You don’t have to sleep outside. You don’t have to be stuck completely exhausted in the saddle. If you don’t want that as a woman, you need a good plan!” MARION DZIWNIK

A good plan. A good flow. And the fear.
“Besides the stress, the lack of sleep was particularly hard. Just imagine, it’s morning. It’s cold. You’ve not slept much and now you’ve got to cycle up a mountain. I was always really grumpy in the mornings. What really helped me was the tape my boyfriend had made. He’d recorded a book as an audiobook for me – it brought me closer to him – I could switch off. But if I’d ridden the race with my boyfriend, we wouldn’t be together any more!”

Around two thirds of the riders who start the race are competing alone; one third ride as a team. It wasn’t clear to me before, but it’s much easier to do it alone.” If she ever competes in the race with Johanna again, she’d rather do it as a friendly challenge than looking out for one another as a team, with no rivalry.

“Riding alone, you have to find your own rhythm. It’s so important! And that’s an unbelievable challenge for a team. In a team, you always have to compromise with the weakest team member.” Marion adds that there was no question of starting as a solo rider. “We were much too afraid of such a new challenge – both of us!”

Twenty women. Two hundred and twenty-nine men.
Speaking of fear: “My theory is that the reason the number of women competing in the TCR has always been low is fear. Fear of the situation. Fear of eastern Europe, perhaps. Fear of the way men behave.” This is reflected in the TCR registration statistics. In 2018, the number of women was higher than ever before. Of the 249 registrations, twenty were women.

“The strength of the race lies in the fact that everything is in your own hands. We had a very structured approach. We never slept outdoors. We scheduled seven hours of sleep every night, and kept strictly to that. We had a good route. And: We found our rhythm as a team – despite our differing motivations! Our plan worked. No complications!”

“If I’d ridden the race with my boyfriend, we wouldn’t be together any more!” MARION DZIWNIK

The end of an era and new myths
With the first women’s team to complete the race (within the time limit) has the heroic era of the Transcontinental Race lost its magic? In a way, yes.

“The whole race doesn’t have to be completely epic. You don’t have to sleep outside. You don’t have to be stuck completely exhausted in the saddle. If you don’t want that as a woman, you just need a good plan!” Marion continues: “Besides, women have a physical advantage. Their fat metabolism is better designed for long distances. In the ultra distance races in the USA, women are already among the leaders!”

Taking a look into the future, in this case the current gender distribution of the registrations, according to race organizer Anna Haslock there has been the highest percentage of female registrations ever. 62 women have been accepted for 2019. That’s three times as many as started in 2018!

With their story, Team 255 – Johanna and Marion – have created a new mythology. Losing the magic doesn’t happen quite that easily. The Transcontinental is simply too spectacular, the checkpoints are too breathtaking, the stages too extreme, the fanbase too crazy and – solid planning notwithstanding – the Transcontinental is an absolutely massive bike race into the sheer unknown…