Dwars door het Hageland
10. April 2012
After a busy week with moving to a new appartement in the beautiful city of Trier and therfore getting my stuff which I felt was ditributed all over Germany, I finally get to maintain my homepage again alittle bit.
Starting the week with a rest day after Triptyque and before moving, probably was a good idea. I started tuesday at 8 o’clock doing two hours on bike, than I packed my stuff from Freiburg, went than straight to Trier unloading the bus and moving the furniture to the right places, ending the day at 11 in the night. Wednesday was about the same. Starting at 7 o’clock heading to Luxembourg for Gas, returning to Trier for a breakfast and than starting for the „Cologne Trip“. Because I like it nice and neat, of course I fixed every thing with a screw on the wall... Sometimes I hate myself :) It took forever to unscrew all the stuff from the wall and than carry it down the four stairs.
After a short visit to Ikea and some afternoon traffic, we finally arrived in Trier where again unloading the bus was to do. Bedtime on wednesday, maybe 11:30.
Thursday, after finally having done all the moving stuff, we just had to return to Freiburg, giving back the bus to my cousin and... wait, actually I’m a cyclist???
Luckily it was raining outside th whole day. But who is a real cyclist without searching the pain? I called a friend of mine and for both of us the day ended with three hours on the rollers – pretty good actually!
And than there was a race. The training on saturday which actually also was a race will not be mentioned...
Monday the ninth of April. Normally the day of „Rund um Köln“, but we were racing in lovely Belgium. I realized that the „Dwaars door het Hageland“ will be my first rain race this year when I looked at the weather forecast. Compliment to the weather forecaster! Five minutes after the start of the 175km’s, the rain started and than was our reliable companion untill the finishline. Unlike some riders who thought they could make a breakaway to the finishline and also unlike our teammate Jesus Ezquerra who didn’t thought of the signature before the race.
After 60 rather easy k’s the breakaway developped with Giorgio, our sprinter. Everybody thought the race was decided now, because all the big teams were in the breakaway and nobody in the peloton was seriously pulling. The maximum gap was at 1:40min and entering the final 6 laps, we came closer an closer to the breakaway. The peloton caught four of the 8 riders again having to laps to go and than we had to pull, because Giorgio was one of them. We, Olli, Giorgio and myself, were the only remaining riders of my team. So it was more ore less my job to close the gap to the breakaway. I was able to maybe close it from 40 to 20 seconds – which was really motivating to myself by the way – but we weren’t able to close it all the way. Giorgio was tired from the breakaway and Olli had to be preserved for the sprint.
When I finished pulling, I bit myself to the end of the peloton, because I knew Olli will need somebody for the sprint and i also new that after the next kilometer, it will mainly go down to the finishline. With knowing that the last K was right in the descent and the last corner at 600m, I said to Olli he should be at my wheel, I take the corner at the head of the peloton and than sprinting as long as ist possible.
I did this, but the first one to pass my at 350 to the finishline was saddly not Olli.
In conclusion, I have to say that we did some mistakes today but also didn’t have the best requirements for that day with half of the team being a little bit sick and rain all day long...