If you are racing mostly others. and not your own demons, you are not racing our kind of race. We dreamed, thought, designed Appenninica to be the race in which you find that aspect.
It’s not about the clock, or at least not only, but it’s mostly about being under test. You test yourself in a deep way, physically and mentally.
A football match lasts 90 minutes; a marathon is 42.195 km long. Our sport is different: when it comes to UCI Marathon events, riders face racecourses between 60 and 160 km. Meanwhile, UCI states that stage races run for “four days or more and feature at least one long-distance stage covering the minimum length of an XCM event, i.e., 60km”.
Granted that UCI’s formats are arbitrary, yet widely accepted, MTB stage racing is and should be shaped by the vision of the organizers who are the ones who know the territory and trails best.
Appenninica is hard. If the weather does not cooperate, it can be brutal. 2019 – boiling hot – and 2021 – with a very wet Queen stage – put everyone to the test. There is no lack of climbing and long technical sections at Appenninica and that will be unchanged. We have so many alternatives to propose to riders, so many trails that we can ensure a race that is always different, but complete at the same time: tough, enjoyable, technical, fast, and of course panoramic. All those features will be in the race equally.
At the end of each stage, we see you, we talk to you, we gather feedback. We even notice the unsaid. We know that you want a tough race, and we keep it as such. When we had mercy and shortened a stage in the second part of the week, your bodies thanked us.
Logistics – another impacting aspect.
We have not hidden the fact that 6 is better than 7 logistically, because many of our riders make it to Italy from other continents. It makes sense to try to fit the race + some recovery + flights within a working week. If you have days to spare, you are in Italy!
These are some of the reasons why we say: six is enough and plenty.