Freiburg 06




	Very hot, with 31° C in the shadows. The fact that we had to do 12 laps (instead of the planned nine) didn’t make things easier. The “fun class” racers (David) only had to do 6 laps while I climbed 1530m in just under two hours. Well, fun was not really the main attraction anyway. Still, I enjoyed the fact that like in St. Märgen I could easily follow the best right from the start. I even passed some pretty good riders but then I risked too much on the first descent and had a tremendous crash which not only gave me abrasions on practically every part of my body (though as usual, my helmet didn’t even touch the ground) but I also broke the nose of my saddle and twisted my bar ends. The whole thing slowed me down quite a bit for the next two rounds, but I just kept going because my legs still felt strong. Only in round 10 did my calved begin to develop cramps and I had to slow down to avoid a complete “lockdown”. In the graph below you can see how my pulse went down in the last two rounds. I lost several places because of this, which was a bit disappointing because I could have easily finished among the top 15 without the crash and the cramps, despite the fact that there were numerous A-class racers. Still, I’m proud that I finished this very hard race at all (5 racers gave up).


	iIf you look at the blue line indicating my speed, you can also see where I crashed in round one and where I had some troubles with my fork in round five because I forgot to open my lockout (I did an involuntary “nose-wheelie”).


	The broken sadle I had to ride on for nearly two hours. A sharp edge in this area would make the bravest of all riders nervous.

		The pictures below were taken by Christian Rokosch, a good friend and great photographer:

Off we go!

On every lap, I had to scrape my bloody elbow throug the branches of a young fir tree in a tight corner. Great fun, I can tell you.

This must have been in round five or six.

I had great support from David - couldn’t have done it without him. Sebastian, Andreas (squatting), my parents and lots of other friends also cheered me on, which helped a lot.

During the first seven rounds, all I ever thought about was which round I was in (“4th round, 4th round, 4th round” etc.). This is very good for pacing yourself and for taking your mind of all the bad things happening to your body. In round eight or nine, I lost count, as usual.

David’s picture of me crossing the finish line. The last two rounds were tough.

The “I did it”-feeling sets in.