A testing start, a fabulous middle section, another sharp leg burner then a flying finish: that pretty much sums up stage 132.
The rollout from Revda crosses the Chusovaya river almost immediately, which in turns leads to the steep ascent into the forest away from the start. The road swings left then back again as it takes a long right hander around the top of the Volchikhinskoe Reservoir. The river feeds into the reservoir at its western edge. There’s a false summit at three miles where the road runs close by the Listvyanka river, but the real crest of the first climb isn’t until five miles at the junction to Flyus down on the reservoir.
The long descent off the top – eleven miles of it – takes you to outskirts of Yekaterinburg where the E22 highway meets the Yekad outer ring road that circumnavigates the town. On the way down the descent, you’ll pass close by Novoalekseyevskoye at seven miles, Ryabinuska at eleven miles and Energetik at thirteen miles.
There’s a short climb after the ring road before the highway flattens out past Gora Khrustal’naya and Karas’yeozerskiy. The flat respite ends at the junction where the E22 leaves the main route into town at twenty miles: indeed the climb of almost two hundred feet in a mile will probably leave your legs screaming in pain. But it is what it is, and it’s mercifully short, even if it is a bit steep.
From the top of the climb at Kontrol’naya, two miles from the finish, it’s a mad dash back downhill to the finish where the E22 meets the inner ring road at a roundabout. The roundabout is actually part of the route for the stage, so the finish has a nice wee right/left combo to it.
Distance: 24 miles / 38 kilometres
Ascent: 702 feet / 214 metres
RGT Magic Road: sQcOBIKAvOBP
Max elevation: 1554 ft
Min elevation: 1265 ft
Total climbing: 704 ft
Total descent: -608 ft
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