The long weekend that was - Garda, Italy

This past weekend, Kera and I headed down to Riva del Garda, Italy for the annual “ride Michael in to the ground fest”

I found this great video on on the Prairie Peddler blog.

I have no hope of ever riding like this but it’s great fun to watch

A few Garda pics here.

We drove down on Thursday which was somewhat uneventful other than the snow falling in Austria. By the time we got to Italy it was shorts and T-shirt weather. We kind of farted around, picked up my registration packet and had lunch at one of our favorite places in the area.

Friday we got up and went for a pretty good almost 50 km mountain bike ride which was supposed to be a “stretch the legs” sort of thing and a chance for Kera to ride non-technical singletrack. Well, the second part of that was correct. She got some good time on some fun singletrack and rocky double-track. Unfortunately, I think we went a little hard which I felt the next day.

Saturday dawned fairly early as I had a 8:00 a.m. start time. Ed Husted (my team mate) also came over to do the race. Ed is a star! The man did the long course (88 km or something with 3000 meters of vertical) on a rigid singlespeed. He way outdid any feat that I could have been credited with.

Anyway, I raced/rode the short course which amounted to just over 55 km and something like 1300 vertical meters (almost all of which was on the first 2 hour climb). I think that I finished 111th in my class. The photos of the race have, finally, been released and they want an arm & a leg for them. They want more per photo then Sportograf wanted for all of them. What’s up with that? I get $5 or 5 Euros but I don’t get 19.90 Euros for each photo. Given that each photographer probably took 500 or more, they’d make 10’s of thousands if people were dumb enough to buy them at that price. If they’d lower the price to something reasonable, I’d imagine that you’d sell a lot more.

The course wasn’t so much of an issue for me. Of course, the past two years it was hell for one reason or another. In 2006 it was the 3 hour climb at the start of the race that I attempted to do on little training and on a rigid singlespeed with thousands of unsympathetic Euro racers aboard their beer-can fully’s, cranking up the mountain in their Granny Gears wondering why I wanted to get around them. Oh, don’t forget the 5 km downhill where I cracked my crank too. That was pretty special as well.

Last year they ran pretty much the same course as this year other than part of it was run inside out. In that part, we had 45 minutes of bike traffic jam. Yes folks… a bicycle traffic jam. Apparently, a lead motorcycle had fallen over in front of the pack at the start of some singletrack and they couldn’t get it righted quickly enough to avoid major problems

This year… 2008. A few problems came together on one day to play with my feeble mind and body. First, a messed up bottom bracket which squeaked so very loudy. I’d even changed out a cracked BB cup but it actually got worse (could have been the lack of grease). Second, riding harder than I should the day before the race as I’d mentioned before (that I blame myself for). Third, I didn’t eat a good breakfast or have any coffee (I’m a freakin’ coffee addict after all). Needless to say, I had absolutely no energy for the epic 2 hour 1050+ vertical meter climb that started the race.

All in all we had a good time, ate some good food, hung out with Ed and got to enjoy some nice riding and fantastic weather. I really can’t complain beyond my race performance.

Photo follow-through

I promised you photos from the Corratec City Bike Marathon. Here are a few. There are more here.

This coming weekend, Ed Husted and I are partaking in the Garda Marathon. I think he’s shooting for the long-loop and I’ll probably be happy if I make the time cut-off for the middle distance (I’d love to do the long one though). I’m sure that we’ll both have race reports from that ASAP afterwards.

Also, this past weekend Kera and I went down to Tegernsee to go for a ride in the mountains. We did about 1/2 of the Tegernsee Marathon loop. It’s a beautiful place, to say the least. The big surprise was the amount of snow that is still on the ground. There’s going to have to be a fair amount of snow melt otherwise we’ll be racing on snow/slush in a month when we race.

Check out the video from last years race (here… nevermind the bad music).

1st Race of the season

This morning, I took part in the first race of my ‘08 season. As I mentioned in my last blog entry this was done in part to gauge my fitness for the upcoming Garda marathon and just because I wanted to do it. Yes… I have to be truthful there.

So, I’ll get results out of the way right off the bat and head on to the meat of the matter. I placed 46th (if you look at my time not where they placed me) out of something like 160 in my class. They don’t seem to have overall results posted, but I’ll keep checking.

O.K., the meat of the matter. Kera and I left (she didn’t race) to ride up to the Olympic Park at about 8:00 this morning as my class and distance were to leave in two groups starting at 8:50 & 8:53. I left in the second group as I didn’t feel like fighting my way to the front of 700-1000 people. By doing this, it meant that I was in the heart of the newbies instead of with more of the seasoned veterans. Looking back, it was probably a big mistake on my part.

The city had blocked off the streets with signs for not only our bike marathon but a running marathon as well. Unfortunately, they didn’t realize what they were dealing with and made a lot of “pinch points” on the course while in the city. Everytime that we got close to one of these areas things got really squirrelly.

What else? Oh… they’d place cones in various places but no one had any idea why. While hundreds of us where rolling though the English Garden and rounding a turn, suddenly there was a bus coming at us. Surprise! We then figured out what the cones were for.

About 25 km in to the race I saw some course tape lying on the side of the gravel/dirt road that we were on. I assumed that it was to block that off and a hiker had broken it (hikers don’t like most cyclists here either). Well…. no! That was there to actually mark the corner. Again, a group of maybe 100+ seemed to figure it out simultaniously and we all did a U-Turn and headed back toward the tape. That cost us 20 minutes and 6-10 km.

Immediately after that, we hit a huge bike traffic jam. When we, finally, made our way up to the front it turned out to be a 1 bike width bridge that we had to cross as the canal was too deep and too cold to cross with the bike.

That was the last major foible short of the roadies that aren’t able to handle a mountain bike on anything other than pavement. As an added bonus, they seemingly can’t make it up a hill without falling over in front of you either. This is where I picked off a lot of people. Give me a climb baby! It’s definitely something that I’ve learned to love while singlespeeding here and in the Alps. I’m a damn good climber. Woohoo… I have at least one good skill on a bike.

After all this it was nearly all flatland gravel, dirt or pavement for the remaining kilometers. I honestly don’t know how many actually. One place the long course was listed as 100 km. Then it was listed as 90 or 87 km depending on where you saw the listing. On my speedometer (with getting lost as well) I have just shy of 72 km. Are you with me? No, I have no actual idea how far we travelled.

Anyway, the end of the race found us riding up and over the Olympic mountain three times in different directions. It was here that I realized that I was in danger of cramping so I downed as much of the fluid that I had and that seemed to help along with spinning vs. mashing. We then rolled in to the Olympic stadium and crossed the timer.

They then fed all of us pizza, all the fruit, cucumbers and cobbler that we could stomach. As always, we also got all the Alcohol-Free Weissbier that we could drink. I had a bit of each and headed home.

How do I feel now? Pretty good actually now that I realize that I’m actually 12 places higher than where they put me. I also know that I need to do some pretty heavy training before Garda and especially before I do a week of climbing starting in Garda and ending up on the other side of the Dolomites. It’s 270 km and 10,800 vertical meters in 6 days.

We then headed off to the Chinese Tower for a going away party for one of the girls that I worked with at Berlitz and her boyfriend who are moving back to the states. It was a perfect day to be outside and even more perfect to be in a beer garden.

Kera’s working on a cool bag for our friend David who’s hosting the SingleSpeed French Rally 2008.

Now we’re home getting ready to BBQ. Till next time.

Before the weekend

A week ago today, I went for a ride with a couple of new ‘friends’. I’d previously met Axel when I spotted his beautiful Bontrager Road bike sitting at a beer garden south of München. Matthias and I went over and drewled on this thing of beauty. Afterwards, we looked at the beer garden crowd trying to gauge whom it must belong to. I picked the solo guy with the Sock Guy socks. If I remember correctly, I was right.

The Sock Guy….er, guy, finished his meal, got on his bike, rolled over to our bikes and did a once over then rolled over to us and struck up a conversation. We talked about Retrotecs (he has a Ti one with a Rohloff rear hub), Independent Fabrications (he has a couple, I think), Phil Wood bikes amongst others. I quickly figured out that Axel was probably an even more avid “bike geek” than even I.

A couple of weeks ago I received a message from a friend of Axels that he wanted to go for a ride and check out my Black Sheep. Somehow, we arranged to meet and he brought along two of his bikes (a Phil Wood Piss-off titanium singlespeed 29′er and a Serrota Ti 29′er) and one of his friends Tommaso. Someone had to ride the other bike. It was Tommaso’s first 29′er experience but definitely not his first riding experience (he mentioned that he used to do a lot of hill climb UCI type events (think… fast).

Anyway, we did about 45 km in total then went and had coffee and a snack at our local Bistro Bissone (very, very Italian). It was fun listening to Tommaso banter with the waiter in Italian. We chatted about this and that and decided that we’d definitely have to repeat this in the future.

In other news… we joined a car sharing group so that means that we should have a car when/if we need it and not have to pay too much to own a car for awhile.

Our friend Justine, whom we met on our Egypt trip, came to visit last week. It was really good to see her. We went down to Neuschwanstein on Sunday and then she and I wandered around town one day and went to see Hayseed Dixie. Kera, unfortunately, had to go out of town on business for most of the time that Justine was here. More pics here.

Lastly, I think that I’m going to do the City Bike Marathon race on Sunday if for no other reason than to figure out how bad of shape that I’m in. Maybe it’ll work as a good training race for Garda coming up in 3 short… very short weeks.

Do you Uni?

Put this in your bag of tricks…

Enjoy the ride.

It’s a fabulously beautiful day in München! I’ve got to work all day and Kera has to go to a work related function tonight. However, I got in a ride or a run each of the last 3 days so I’m a bit toasted in the legs anyway.

Decisions galore

I took the above pic of myself (gotta love timers) riding close to home the other day. It’s roughly 10-15′ down from the top of this. This was a really frustrating day for me for many reasons, so I ‘attacked’ the trail like an enemy. It felt good to work off all that anger and frustration. Things are quite a bit better now.

________________

It’s the middle of the week and I’m getting ready to take off to teach a class and then go get the next tattoo at least started. The design is a surprise, of sorts. I’ll wait till it’s done to post picks of it (unless we only do part tonight), then I’ll post what gets finished.

Other decisions to be made, the most important one at this point is whether to run singlespeed, 9 speed or 27 speed at Garda in about 4 weeks. I’d really like to ride the Black Sheep as it’s the bike that I’d expected to have for the race last year and it’s light and handles really well.

My major hang-up is whether to hang derailluers on it and maybe put the Reba back on for  Garda. I can’t get last years first climb out of my mind (something like 500 meters in not too long of a run). In short… UGH! The other thing that I think of is the first year that I did it on a singlespeed. It took me just over three hours to complete the first climb. Do I really want to repeat that?

Lastly, I’d really like to do the long course and I’m guessing that I won’t be fast enough without gears to make the time cut-off (especially if there’s a bike traffic jam again this year). That thought alone might help make my decision.

Other things on my tiny brain slate:

Where are we staying for SS World’s in Napa?

Where are we staying for Garda (this might need to be first)?

Am I getting enough training in to do well this year?

When will I get the resume/CV in for the job my buddy Clark told me about?

There’s more….. I told you it was a small slate.

Ah… should I do the City Race going on in town in two weeks? My thought is yes as it will help me gauge whether or not I’m going to die at Garda or not.

Last but not least, thanks a lot to my in-laws for taking possession of the crazy amount of stuff that we had in storage. We appreciate it very much. Thanks!

Spring….. blech!

For many, Spring is their favorite season, for me, it’s my least favorite. Maybe it’s my psychosomatic allergy to rain and mud. I’m not sure really, I just know that I hate it. Seemingly, the weather gods know when I want to go outside so they make it rain and then it’s sunny when I’m going to be working.

Yes… I’m being slightly, only slightly dramatic. Hell, why ruin a good story with the facts. Geez!

Anyway, I somehow tricked the weather gods today and got out for a pretty good ride. Not really very long, but good just the same. It was good mostly ybecause I found the roads to be 95% dry and then when I found some new singletrack it was similarly dry. Woohoo! A banner day. Sadly, I don’t get to ride much singletrack, there just isn’t much around this part of the planet.

Therefore, when I have a day where I find new singletrack, it’s dry, I’m on my singlespeed and I’m loving the flow, there’s not much else that puts a smile on my face the same way. Hopefully, the weekend weather will cooperate and Kera and I can get out for at least a 2-3 hour road ride both days.

Last weekend found us doing the sledding thing instead as we were getting snowed on. Bizarre eh? We rode the lift to the top and then sledded the 6 kilometers to the bottom. Way fun!

The Loooooong Easter weekend

As most of you realize, it’s Easter weekend around the world. We’ve got 4 days off here. Unlike the U.S. everything was closed yesterday and it will be again on Sunday and Monday. Therefore, it requires preplanning to make sure that we have enough food and drink in the house.

Some good friends (Nikki & Aaron) sent us the care package laid out in the photo above. It came Thursday before the long weekend. In it we found Mexican spices and candy also some Peeps, Girl Scout cookies and some Keebler cookies. To make it all that much better there was also come coffee beens to feed my coffee jones. All we can say is… THANK YOU GUYS!!

Yesterday, we went to a 2 hour spin class that included a fair amount of weight work. This morning I felt like I’d been riding a horse for 100 miles. Kera’s been doing a lot in the mornings in regards to spin class and a Monday weight class, so she wasn’t nearly as sore. There’s a reason that I call here “Tough Girl.”

We’re off to dinner with friends tonight and we’ll probably do something with some other friends tomorrow night. That still leaves a whole day on Monday to relax.

The last two things…

Kera’s foot.

My new uniforms.

New BWR post

If you’re interested… there’s a new post over on the BWR Europe site.

Happy Leap Day!

Ah… the most revered day 29 Feb. is upon us and what wonderful quip do I have for you? Nuttin’. Just wanted to say Happy Leap Day! as I don’t get to do it very often.

Kera’s off doing her work/snow shoe trip but comes home this afternoon. Tonight, we go say goodbye to the director of the school that I do most of my work for. She’s Irish and is moving back home to Ireland because her German husband got a good job there. What’s  interesting about this is that she’s having a lot of the same feelings that I have when I think about moving back to the States.

For example, even though there are a few things about the German system and people that irk me, there are far more about the American system and way of life that get under my skin. Kera and I live in a foreign land and we’ll ALWAYS be foreigners here, there’s nothing that we can do about that….short of giving up our U.S. passports which won’t happen.

However, when we were last in the States, I realized that I just don’t really feel comfortable there. I’ve gotten used to using my bike and the subway for transport. Getting in a car EVERYTIME that you go somewhere really started to bother me. Also, I like going to the grocery store or the bakery daily. It’s just part of my life now. It’s something that I don’t want to change and I can’t think of a place that we can have those things and still have easy access to mountains like the Alps on the weekends.

Basically, I guess that I’m saying I’m a foreigner where I live and I felt like a foreigner in my own land. Maybe that will never change, who knows for sure?

In less dour news. I got a decent run in yesterday. I didn’t have time between classes to get in a ride, so running gives me the right to have a bumper sticker that says “my other bike is a pair of running shoes”.

We didn’t get in to the Kulsheim 12 hour race as we missed the cut-off date. I sent an email inquiring as  to why and they responded saying that last year someone almost took them to court over an email over same. Crazy! So, I’m on the hunt for a race to replace it that is 12 or 24 hours with something in the range of 10 mile or more laps. Most 12 & 24 hour races here use 5-8 km length laps. That means that a winning solo or team will do 99-200 laps.

To me, anything shorter than an hour lap begins to get tedious after about 6 or 7 rounds.

O.K., I’ve got to get headed to school. It’s raining like crazy today but it’s been mostly beautiful the last few days, so we’re lucky.

Taken on a ride the other day. Look familiar?