Erstellt am: 2. 6. 2015 - 06:00 Uhr
"You Gain A New Respect For the Riders of Old"
Retz in the Weinviertel, with its cobbled town square and pseudo-Venetian architecture, seems a sleepy sort of place – but not when the In Velo Veritas bike ride is in town. At half past five in the morning on a Sunday, a troupe of bike freaks has gathered gather wearing leather helmets and bike caps to embark on a 210km vintage bike odyssey.
Chris Cummins
The loop will take them through the rolling vineyard-combed hillside and up in the Czech Republic. It's the start of the third official edition of an event that started informally with a few dozen eccentric friends. Now it has grown to accommodate nearly 500 riders, some of whom have arrived from abroad for Austria's equivalent of Italy's L'Eroica.
With rides of 140km or 70km on offer, both starting at a more civilised time, only a select few are foolhardy to crawl out of bed for the full length ride. To acknowledge their commitment, and make a tidy profit, the local bakery has opened early and the cyclists are munching on croissants; their steel-framed bikes propped against the café chairs, their spokes tinged orange by the dawn sun. It looks like we have been transported back to the romantic aesthetic gold age of road-cycling when even the top-riders carried a bit of weigh under their woollen jerseys.
Chris Cummins
"It's quite a challenge"
“It’s a nice alternative to modern bikes and you learn a lot about your own limits,” says Vienna-based Stefan Beisteiner, who is wearing the shade of his blue and white cap jauntily upturned so that he looks like a mischievous schoolboy, “because you are not used to the old techniques. It is quite a challenge.”
The challenge comes from shifting gears from levers on the stem of the bike. I always have to look down to do it, fearing that if I grasp unsighted I’ll put my finger into the whirring spokes.
Chris Cummins
Woes in the Toes
And the leather straps over the pedal cages are a nightmare if you have grown used to the click-clack pedals we all ride today. By the time I have got my feet in, I start worrying that I’ll never get them out again. I start pedalling in a strange way and my toes cramp. I’m used to my legs hurting, and even my lungs – but my toes?
Chris Cummins
“It gives you renewed respect for the cyclists of the past eras,” says Robert Wolf, who has put a lot of time and research into dressing the part: “Just wearing the shoes and the leather-lined shorts; you get an idea of the sort of hardships the old legends put up with.”
Rasputin On A Bike
I’ve borrowed my dashing red bike from Daniel Ehrl, who is carbo-loading on a Wurschtsemmel. He waxes lyrical about starting at this unearthly pre-Morning Show hour: talking of the “amazing experience” of cycling against the “rising sun” while everyone else is still asleep in bed. But Daniel is fairly hard-core: the thickly bearded cycle enthusiast rode from Vienna to Vladivostok last summer; communicating in the wilds Central Asia, he says, mostly by the power of gesture.
The trip has left its mark. He looks like a sturdy-legged Rasputin and he has taken on a mystical air – a sort of high priest of Genussradler culture: “The point of this is to enjoy riding in a group and not competing as in a race. You just ride with you friends and enjoy the day.” I pray at that altar – cycling has never been about seconds and minutes for me.
Chris Cummins
Dumplings Not Energy Bars!
So it’s a dual journey; a trip back in time but also a rather arduous pedal-fest, especially as, in my sleep-deprived state, I can’t see the actually very well-marked yellow arrows and take my little group on a 19km scenic detour.
Chris Cummins
The ride then takes us border for 50km through the Czech Republic, where red-roofed towns like Znojmo are perched on hills. It’s a long way but there’s no rush on this very chilled-out ride – instead of snatching energy bars and nuts at feeding stations we sit down for dumplings and lentils and big bottles of grape juice served by Weinviertel matrons in aprons.
And the riding is stress free too. We stop and take selfies – hey it might be vintage and nostalgic but some parts of 2015 digital culture must survive!
Organiser Horst Watzl doesn’t see the ride as a fancy dress party, but rather a connoisseur’s annual treat. “These jerseys are design triumphs and these bikes are simply great to ride. The steel absorbs the bumps. I ride modern bikes too, but it is always a huge pleasure to ride these classics.”