(upbeat music)
- It's safe to say that one of the monuments
of the long-distance triathlon
racing calendar is Challenge Roth.
And indeed, 2019 is the 32nd addition
of this most famous of German events.
And each year, there are some three thousand
five hundred individual competitors,
plus another six hundred relay teams,
and the demand for those precious entry slots
is arguably as fierce as the racing will be
this coming Sunday.
Now, aside from the famed atmosphere of this event,
there are many iconic sections of this racecourse
that we're going to go and take a little look at today,
just to see what it is that keeps drawing people back,
year upon year, to this corner of Bavaria.
(electronic beeping)
So first up with our iconic venues
in the Roth Course is this, the swim section.
And this behind me is pretty impressive if you ask me,
and is actually the Rhine-Main-Danube canal.
Which is part of a much greater European canal network,
Starting at the North Sea in Rotterdam,
tracking all the way to the south-east of Europe
and exiting into the Black Sea in Romania.
So it's quite a feat of engineering,
and essentially is one large swimming pool.
It's about 60 to 80 meters wide here,
and this particular section of the canal
is split up into 15 or so large locks,
and what that means is the organizers can cooperate
with the canal operators to regulate
the flow of water upstream.
So if the water's getting a bit warm,
they can have some cooler water
flush through the canal network
in the days leading up to the race,
ensuring that this water is always just right
for a wetsuit-legal swim.
Meaning that there's always
going to be faster swim times here in Roth.
The athletes start just behind me
and they track all the way up the canal here,
doing an anti-clockwise loop that comes back down,
hugging this canal bank that you can see
down there behind that bridge in the far distance,
and then exiting just there on this side
of the bank, up into transition.
(upbeat music)
So we're onto the bike course now here in Challenge Roth,
and there's a number of key hotspots
that the organizers promote and organize.
The first of which is this one here,
little village of Eckersmühlener.
And they turn this entire street corner
that you see behind me, into what they call a beer mile.
Now I don't think it is actually a full mile in length,
but all these cars that you see behind me,
they will be gone.
That will be one long trestle table
filled with people sitting,
cheering on the athletes as they go by.
I guess there will be quite a bit
of beer involved, too, as it is the beer mile.
but this corner, essentially, is a really good
hotspot for people to see athletes early in the bike course,
and just before they finish they go round this corner
just in front of me, take a right
and they have the final five K towards T2.
So we're onto our next hotspot on the Roth bike course,
and this is what the organizers term
the Kalvarienberg hospot.
It's in the town of Gredinger, around about 35 K's
on the athletes first lap, and again
at 120 K's on their second lap.
And that's when the gradient of this climb
is really going to pinch the athletes
because this ends up being the highest spot
of the entire Roth bike course.
You can see the road climbing off up there behind me,
and it's this gradient of 10% that really adds
to the atmosphere on this particular hotspot
because as the athletes slow down
to tackle that steeper gradient,
they're pretty much at their slowest speed
on this entire Roth course.
So the crowds can really line this street
that runs behind me, and cheer all the athletes on
as they head on up that hill,
which the organizers call the hill of pain.
So not long after the hill of pain
comes this next section of note in the bike course,
which is a long sweeping section of hair-pins
like you can see behind me here.
Drops you down into the small village of Obermassing.
And from my memories last year,
these were really interesting parts of the course
because most of it is long, fast TT stretches,
where you're down in the bars.
Whereas here, you suddenly have to think about
a little bit of technical nature.
That is actually something that the organizers
give everybody a heads-up on in their race briefings,
because it would be very easy to lose concentration
and have a crash on these long, fast descents
when all you've been used to doing
in the rest of the course is staring at your aero bars.
So yep, these corners are a really nice part of the course.
So we've made it here to our final hotspot
on the Roth bike course, the Solarer Berg climb
that you can see just behind me here.
Possibly the most famed part of this whole
Roth triathlon, and in fact, arguably one of the
most famed in the whole of the triathlon world,
if you ask me.
There's not many people who haven't heard
about this quite famous stretch of road.
Now, it's not particularly noted
for the steepness gradient, or even the length of this hill
because there's nothing particularly of note there.
What is famous about the Solarer Berg climb
is the thousands, tens of thousands even,
of spectators who congregate here during race day
to cheer on the athletes or watch their
friends and family competing
from this really iconic section of the course.
There's all sorts of stuff happening throughout the day,
they've got DJs on course, they've got all sorts
of big screens, there's food, drink,
everything that people could need
to really get a Tour de France type of experience.
(upbeat music)
So I've made my way onto the run course now
and I'm actually just before the first turning point,
which is about the 10K marker.
And this view that you can see behind me is,
well in my opinion, one of the iconic images,
very striking, of the whole Challenge Roth course.
I remember seeing pictures of this
in the magazines when I was growing up back in the day.
And in fact, until a couple years ago,
this is actually where almost
the entire marathon happened, here at Challenge Roth.
It's an ideal surface for running on,
it's a lovely soft gravel trail.
It's entirely flat because it tracks the canal bank,
the same canal the triathletes were in
first thing this morning for their swim.
But the main problem is, and I guess
you can kind of see that behind me,
is it's very lonely out here.
There's almost nothing spectator-wise.
And that, a couple years ago,
was something the organizers decided to change.
So to fix that, couple years ago
the organizers mixed up the marathon course
to take away some of the distance
from that lonely canal section.
Incorporating Roth town center itself
and other small communities on the fringes,
such as this one here called Buchenbach.
Now this lake beside me is actually
an extended turn around point at approximately
the 35K point on the marathon.
So the ideal area to have one last motivational boost,
which will come from all of the residents
who line the path here and give loads
of encouragement to the athletes
as they have their final push
towards the finish in Roth town center.
Well it's been a real trip down memory lane
having a look at all these
iconic hotspots of the Roth course.
And hopefully you've enjoyed seeing them
as much as I have revisiting them.
And indeed, if you're racing this weekend,
I do hope that it has been of some use for your race prep.
Hope you've enjoyed this video,
so please hit that thumb-up like button.
Find the globe somewhere on-screen
to get all the other videos on our channel.
And if you want to get some more detailed,
numbered stats about the whole Roth race,
then you can find the video that Mark did here.