The rules for 'The Race Across the Alps' are pretty simple. You get given a road book the day before (in German) you’re allowed one support vehicle and you, or your support team, have to send a text message to race officials at certain points to prove you're still alive. Easy eh?

Well, having not experienced something of this scale on the road before I spent a fair few evenings tuning two bikes to, hopefully, give me an answer to most situations that may be encountered.

The frame platform for both bikes is Cannondale’s full carbon SuperSix, with the stealthy black number being the 2010 high modulus version that the Liquigas boys have been racing on since the beginning of the year. This is what I class as my climber's bike. The frame is un-painted, skimming a few more grams from it in the process, to bring it down to 870 grams. Mavic Cosmic Carbone Ultimate wheelset with Continental Competition tubulars keep rotating mass to an absolute minimum. Although the bike is light, at 6.6kg/14.5lb, I haven’t sacrificed safety with suspect components. Campag 10 speed groupset and USE finishing kit are all tried and tested components that I’ve been riding for years.

To make life a bit easier between mountains I’ve set my white SuperSix up with a more focused slant on aerodynamics. Tula Boost bars from USE will offer another position, helping to lower wind resistance when in the valleys and in the run up to the next ascent. The cool thing here is that because they’re fitted to a bike with standard geometry, there’s no reason why I can’t climb and descend on this bike with confidence if need be.

Both bikes are set up with Cannondale’s BB30 Hollowgram chainset with 34/50 rings. It may seem like a low gear but when you hit the 18% gradients on the Mortirolo after 200km, and there’s still another 300km+ to go, I’m confident this gearing will work to my advantage.

For any event that goes through the night, lighting is as essential as your bike itself. I’ll be running a combination of Exposure Lights depending on how severe the night is (there aren’t many street lamps at 2,500m altitude in the Alps so I’m prepared for the worst). It took more than one late night to work out how to set my handlebars up with Tula bars and a MaXx D, without getting cable interference. Setting it up with the biggest light in the range means I can step down to an Enduro or Race to save weight if full power isn’t needed. Joystick’s will be helmet mounted for ‘look where you’re going light’.

As if there wasn’t enough going on at the front end I just about managed to fit the Garmin Edge 705 onto the stem, freshly loaded with 535km of GPS mapping (now there’s a route I don’t want to map out again!) I know when I’m out on the road this unit will come into its own once again so it was worth the squeeze.

Contact points are the same on each bike. Fi’zi:k Aliante saddle and bar tape, with a gel strip on the tops, for a touch more comfort. Although, in all fairness, I’ve got a feeling that no amount of gel is going to stop the hurt on this ride.

To be honest, it’s incredible how much equipment is needed to try and cover all bases in an event like this. A full wardrobe of summer and winter wear, extra shoes, gloves, overboots, helmet set-up for night riding, energy bars, gels, electrolyte/carb/recovery drinks, spare parts, tyres, tubes, lubes…The list is endless, well, to the point where the boot on the car only just shuts then you know it’s time to crank up the tunes, hit the road and dream of riding those mountains! Bring it on!

For information on the race click here