Stage 96 – Rabotki to Luzhki

After the pain of stage 95 comes more pain on stage 96, and it’s longer.

The brutality starts early as the Volga highway heads away from the river of the same name. Although the road generally runs parallel to the river for much of the stage, its meanderings over tributaries that flow into the main river inevitably mean climbing and descending aplenty.

The first crossing, of the Alferovka river after just two miles, comes at the end of a mad fast descent out of the pen. The road turn sharply to the right thereafter and heads straight uphill for two miles, gaining four hundred feet of ascent in the process, before taking a sweeping left hander that drops gradually at first before diving much more steeply to the crossing of the river Kitmar at eight miles.

Inevitably, that’s followed by another steep climb, this one of two miles and two hundred feet of ascent which tops out at the town of Niva at ten miles. It then remains pretty flat to the yellow kite just before the junction to Okinino to the north.

Another mad descent then ensues, and the M7 drops down to cross the Ushakovka river between Barannikovo to the north and Letnevo to the south. Away from the river, the climbing starts all over again, this time shallower and longer than what’s gone before. The highway passes through Lyskovo at twenty miles, which is probably large enough to warrant a road sign on RGT. That’s followed by yet another descent to yet another river crossing, this time the Valava at twenty one miles.

As the road passes by Neverovo, so the climbing starts all over again, although this one’s short and sharp at only fifty feet in half a mile. And thankfully, that’s practically it for the climbing, because apart from a gentle rise to the finish line, it’s a two mile descent down to the run in. The river that awaits at that point will welcome you onto stage 97.

Distance: 24 miles / 38 kilometres

Ascent: 827 feet / 252 metres

RGT Magic Road: IbMFuecSRKLG

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