Race Across Germany

It was mid-August. I had come home to Portugal with my soul full and my body dry — 3% body fat, to be exact. I had lost 18 pounds (8 kg) between Italy and the North Cape. I came home with the idea of taking a serious run at RAAM, but with nothing on the calendar and no plan whatsoever.

Down at the beach in the Algarve, trying every trick I knew to put the weight back on, the organizer’s email arrived: if he could round up more than ten lunatics, the race would happen in September. Three weeks out.

When the universe hands you a sign like that — and everyone you share the coincidence with rolls their eyes — there is only one available move. Pick up the phone and make good on the tentative invitation I’d floated not long after the Portugal Divide. I called two close friends and asked them to do something with me that none of us had ever done: me, riding 500 miles (800 km) without getting off; them, splitting the driving of a follow vehicle I still had to rent. I closed the deal with João Miguel Gonçalves, a childhood friend from the Évora days, from a dentist’s chair — courtesy of some bad luck halfway to the North Cape. And, after a quick lap of my own head, the same with Ricardo Elvas, an old work colleague, living in Germany at the time. Oh, and we decided we’d all grow mustaches. Portuguese ones. Because why not.

Sort the logistics, train what could be trained, read the rules again — and three weeks later, on September 9, João Miguel and I were on our way to Aachen (Aquisgrão in our language, which is a curiosity in itself), hard up against the Belgian and Dutch border, where we’d start. The RAG comes in two versions: North–South and West–East. The first is longer and gives you more hours to spread the effort across. The second, the one I chose, is shorter and leaves almost no room for bad luck: the cut-off was 38 hours.

And by now it wasn’t only about that crossing. There was no hiding it: however I turned it over, I wasn’t just going to ride a race. I was going out to earn a qualification for what is generally held to be the hardest ultra-cycling race in the world.

On the Thursday before, we went to the Aachener Brauhaus to collect the paperwork: race number, safety stickers for the car and the bike, and the tracker — the little box that would put our position online and that, from then on, would be our proof that the ride happened at all. To pick it up that Thursday afternoon you had to satisfy the “three G” rule then in force in Germany: produce a negative test, proof of recovery, or proof of vaccination. We did the supermarket run, ate our first McDonald’s dinner, and went to get some rest.

On September 10, at 8:30 a.m., I rolled off a square in Aachen — the car wouldn’t meet me until a few miles down the road. Two days of racing, the 10th and the 11th, with the cut-off already tightening on the second. On the very first descent we went the wrong way — nothing serious: turn around, and the other rider who had started with me and I picked the route back up. I remember reaching the tarmac and watching him go, hard, full of conviction. That wasn’t quite my plan — this was a long race, one to ride with your head and manage — but everyone knows their own business.

As far as Bonn, the rule was ride alone: follow vehicle nearby, but leap-frogging, never sitting in behind. The organization had already redrawn the official line for that first stretch into Bonn, because of the floods that had wrecked the region a few weeks earlier. Viaducts, small green hills, and one word of command: roll.

It was crossing the Rhine that the pack came together. A couple of hours after the start, next to a bridge, João Miguel pulled the van over and opened the door. Ricardo, who had flown in from Berlin, reported for duty — and the two of them pulled out behind me.

After Bonn there was a point where the cars had to take a detour of their own and I was left on my own for a while. I stopped at a gas station to wait for them, took on food and water, and carried on. It wasn’t long before the three of us were deep in the interior of the country, which never gives you a real mountain and never gives you a break either — up and down without pause, and it’s the sum that does the damage.

The shoulder had been wrecked by the crash at Aljustrel, and with the surgery postponed again it had to be managed on the front foot — kept sweet wherever possible, met head-on when it went outside the lines. Love-hate.

Late in the day the night came down, and the rain with it, and the cold started to leave a mark. But the spirit was high.

The first big landmark was called Bad Hersfeld, at mile 211 (km 339): one of the race’s time stations, and the McDonald’s the race guide had anointed as the cult meeting point of the RAG. It isn’t pretty, but there it is: in races like that, a McDonald’s open at an impossible hour is worth more than a view. Getting there was the first concrete sign that the plan was working — not halfway yet, but already a lot more than an intention.

At the gas station I stretched my quads, ate a burger, and we got Tiago Fernandes on the phone; he was following the race from a distance.

On one of the longer climbs, riding out of the saddle, I remember calling António Coutinho — our GI Joe — who had built a motivational playlist for the occasion. And it played well: window down, volume all the way up, setting the cadence.

A stop to try to sleep, the middle of the night by now. I couldn’t bring myself to wake Ricardo, who was asleep in the back, and I tried the power nap twice in the passenger seat, in vain. All bent up, half upright, propped against the center console — if I went under at all, it was barely. Deeply frustrated, and half-fogged, I set off for the miles still owed.

This had been building for a while. A few hours earlier, going through hour twenty-two on one badly slept hour, I started weaving across the road. From the car behind, João Miguel and Ricardo saw it at the same instant: “Stop everything and pull over!”

I was shaking with cold, stomach burning, nauseous. They put me in the car and wrapped me in a space blanket while João Miguel went through the medical kit looking for something that would put me back on the bike. That was when I started talking about Benfica — the history of the club, tactics, four-four-two this and four-four-two that. He is a die-hard Sporting man, and for a moment he thought I was winding him up. It was just the brain beginning to give.

The color and the clarity came back inside a few minutes. They would let me go on, on one condition: if it happened again, it ended there and they called an ambulance. I said I was fine — with some reluctance, admittedly, but with no room to negotiate. They were doing exactly what they were there to do, and from the outside it was the only thing that made sense.

Another stop, the day breaking now. This one was a moment of truth. Car pulled onto the shoulder; frustrated at not being able to sleep and groggy with it, I made a move for the bike. João Miguel and I had a tête-à-tête — him, the fright still fresh, close to forbidding me to continue; me in snowplow mode, knowing and feeling that there was no time left to stop, that this was going to come down to the wire. The organization’s own guide warned about precisely this: if the rider starts weaving across the road or giving confused answers, stop immediately. João Miguel was, instinctively, following the manual to the letter. Nothing more, nothing less. And I was in a foul mood. But the standoff couldn’t hold. A few minutes of negotiation and a trip into the bushes later, I talked them into letting me go — steady, and with the situation monitored.

But daylight wakes the body up, and soon enough the descents were flying.

At an intersection, the van pulls up behind me, the windows come down, and out it comes at full volume: the Sport Lisboa e Benfica anthem. Beautiful thing. Ricardo laughing himself sick, João Miguel suffering and watching the limits of friendship get properly tested, and me singing at the top of my lungs, taking a clean boost of motivation and good humor out of it.

I stopped on the shoulder — another small argument about sleeping for an hour. But no: there was no slack. I had to keep going.

And there really wasn’t any. The second time station came up at Wilsdruff, at mile 413 (km 664). From there, a little over 80 miles (130 km) left, which on a fresh morning is a training ride and in that state was an open question. The cut-off was breathing down my neck and my margin was measured in minutes, not hours. From Wilsdruff on, the race stopped being a crossing and became a countdown.

A 10% climb in the late afternoon came straight out of my hide. I was anything but fresh, and the music could not have been better chosen: “quando a cabeça não tem juízo, o corpo é que paga” — when the head has no sense, the body pays. Variações knew.

Shortly after that, inside a town, a nasty descent on cobbles, steep and full of tight corners, dangerous because it was wet, where I had to work seriously hard not to put it on the ground.

Late in the afternoon we passed through a very beautiful city of grand buildings — I remember towers in particular, and a bridge. That would have been Görlitz, the usual finish. This year it wasn’t possible, and I was heading instead for Lake Berzdorf, the “Blue Lagoon” (Campingpark Berzdorfer See).

Road closed. We had to turn back, after pushing and trying to get through anyway. Time was running out, tempers were going red inside the car — but the thing to do was shake off the pressure and believe.

This was the moment of truth: either I had what it took or I didn’t. I asked for help and I got it. I went into the last miles with four legs pulling, and after a section around the lake on a long, badly lit access road — the whole time afraid of a wrong turn — we dropped down onto the final straight. At the end of it, Dieter’s flashlight. Fist clenched first, then pointing straight up, I crossed the line.

It was done. I was qualified for RAAM, with fifty-seven minutes in hand against the 38 hours of the cut-off.