Tag Archives: Sports

Around the Schönbuch

The “Schönbuch” is a forest area, under protection, just next to my home-town Holzgerlingen. Of course the pathways in the forest are not paved, so with the road-bike we have to go “around”. Which is a quite nice tour, with some really great views, and can be made between 65km and 80km long.

We’ve done this a few times this year, on different routes, and today was a nice Saturday to repeat another variation. Over the broad B464 “highway”, which is currently quite deserted due to road-constructions which causes most cars to go a long de-tour. Road for the bikes… This time we went to Pfrondorf and down to Kirchentellinsfurth. Quite a few times already we climbed this hill, and are usually a bit exhausted as this is then one of the last climbs of a larger tour. Today downhill… and that is really nice. So we continued via Tübingen towards Entringen.

The colors were really great today. It is still summer, but the sun is not anymore coming straight down, so it seems like the colors are more intensive. The white clouds against the blue sky were fantastic today. And going over hills… you often have fantastic views. First towards the “Schwäbische Alb” and then towards the Schönbuch again, with the town of Entringen. Had to take a picture.

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View towards Entringen and the Schönbuch

All in all we did a relatively relaxed tour today, 72km and 540m altitude with 26,6 km/h. After a rainy week, we were once again lucky with the Saturday weather. Unfortunately the Sunday forecast is bad, rainy 🙁 .

The 5-hills tour in the Nagold valley

For a few years already we discuss regularly to run a “mountain training” along the valley of Nagold. Finally yesterday we managed. My legs today tell me, that we completed successfully!

Yes, there are of course several more climbs, but I selected 5 really nice ones and some of the steepest. The first was just to warm up, from Dätzingen towards Calw. But then first bummer, the “Öländerle”, with 15-18% steep sections. But actually quite good to climb, as there are several steep sections followed by slightly less steep parts, followed with another ramp… several times. Reaching Stammheim for a quick flat part, the climb continues towards Holzbronn to complete hill number 2.

First downhill again into the valley, and now up from Seitzental towards Altbulach. This is really nice to go, not quite so steep, I guess up to 12%. Once up, continuing in direction towards Wildberg, there is a fantastic view into the valley and over Wildberg. From here it’s already possible to see hill 4 (although not on the picture).

Blick auf Wildberg

Downhill to Wildberg we quickly cross the town on the bikeway along the Nagold river… but only shortly, as directly after the town the next hill starts left-hand of the regular bike-path: Hill 4 “Kühlenberg”. This is another bummer, starting with a normal climb, quite suddenly the steepness increases to 18% for several long ramps. Nice!

Reaching Oberjettingen via the farms (the “Höhenhöfe”), we continue down via Emmingen towards Nagold. Here we have earned a break with nice cakes and coffee. No cowards today, we take on the last one, Hill 5: directly out of Nagold we climb up the “Eisbergsteige”. Starting with the end of the houses in Nagold, this climb provides a constant climb of 15-18%… no breaks or relaxing parts. Well, I chose it that way, so no complaining… and we did it 🙂

The pure statistics doesn’t sound spectacular: 110km, approx. 1400-1600m altitude with average speed of 24 km/h, but the number of ultra-steep climbs makes this a really special one. I guess we should be well prepared for the “RTF” in Magstadt next week.

Tour on GPSies:

Different type of work today

The day started cold and with a drizzle. Just about right to work at home. In the last weeks, I had so much “stuff” to do, that I did not manage the household… so a lot of small things accumulated. But now that is back in order.

Only around 4 o’clock I managed get onto the bike. But still the temperature was rather low, just around 14°C … I’d call that cold while riding. Only between Deckenpfronn and Kuppingen finally the sun came out. View in direction Affstätt and Herrenberg:

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Finally a nice little evening-tour, around ~50km.

Around Stuttgart

Mid of last week, Ralf asked, whether we would start at the “RTF” (organized bike tour) around Stuttgart (“Rund um Stuttgart”). In principal a good idea, but: Start/Finish in Untertürkheim, where we would have to start at the latest at 9:00 … which means we would need to take the train in Böblingen at 8:00. Hmm, that’s pretty early. And then I checked the tour… it goes via Sindelfingen/Ehningen and through Holzgerlingen, my home town!

So why not create a “Around Stuttgart Special” tour and ride the official track, but from “Böblingen to Böblingen”, great idea, right?

Thought, agreed, done: So we started at our club-house at 10:00, through the Aichtal at pretty high speed until Grötzingen where the tour started to go on roads that I didn’t know, as this is not my typical area. But with the RTF signs at every turn, it was easy to follow the roads until Untertürkheim through nice sceneries. Arrived at the start/finish area after about 50km, where we made a short break.

Then we started again and followed a sign “Tour A und B this direction”… OK, so we climbed the Rotenberg which is one of the nice hills in Stuttgart, about 200m altitude, with a great view over Stuttgart. Once being here, this is a view that you must enjoy:

Rotenberg

A small issue with that. This was not the official route. We must have missed a turn, so climbing up here was not really intentional. OK, same way back down. Checked the GPS track on the smartphone… shortly after the sign we had missed a turn left. OK, next try. A few kilometers through the vineyards … until the next road crossing. No RTF sign, checking the SmartPhone, we are on the right track. What’s up now? Well, after short thinking it became clear. The official start was planned until 9:00, but we were at the start only at 12:00 as we had left Böblingen only at 10:00. So the organizers had already started to remove the signs. Clearly my fault, bad planning.

So at first, I started to check the Smartphone at every road crossing that was unclear. But that doesn’t work well, you have to stop each time and wait, that is not “road bike” like. But Martin, one of our team, had a bike-GPS mounted and had done this tour already some 8 years ago, and still had the old tour stored. The old tour was a bit different, but at least this would allow us to follow directions without stopping.

For the next few kilometers we first had to find to the right road of the old route and missed a few turns, so we stumbled across some of the outer parts of Stuttgart, until we reached the right track. Around Fellbach and Kornwestheim, the old route used a lot of main roads, so we had quite a lot of traffic. After about 20km we reached “outside Stuttgart” around Münchingen, Hemmingen and Heimerdingen, and things went much better. Very nice scenery again.

Shortly before we reached Magstadt, we followed known roads again, but I was a bit surprised about the road there. I already knew that after many, many years of construction work, the last bit of the new B464 was finished. However there was no side-road, and the B464 is like Autobahn, so we HAD to cycle almost one kilometer on the B464 until we could leave it and enter Magstadt. This is a bit strange. So here we left the official RTF track, as we all started to be a bit tired and wanted to take the shortest route back to Böblingen. After all, here is our home-turf.

Despite the extra-tours in Stuttgart, I think it was a nice tour, the views over Stuttgart on such a nice day were worth it. But next year we either have to prepare better by loading the official GPS track on a bike navigator,… or we don’t do the tour this day again.

Back home, I had 132,2km, 1.340m altitude with an average speed of  23,9km/h recorded. Not bad, I think we’ll all sleep well tonight.

More biking …

For a number of years I participate in the organized tours of my club  RSG and for the last 3-4 years, I organize the tours (RSG-Website, in German). Recently Brigitte who organizes the Holzgerlinger Lauftreff asked me if I could organize the routes for a few bike enthusiasts on Thursdays in the evening. So I volunteered spontaneously.

Last Thursday was the first tour, and I think it went pretty well. Every new group must learn a bit the coordination. We “lost contact” twice, and were a little disorganized to find us again, so finally we arrived back in two groups. Nothing that could not be solved the next time. The speed was a little bit high at times, again communication is something that can be learned 🙂

Although the forecast is really cold, we’ll do the second turn tomorrow. Looking forward to it and hope that people will come again and were not discouraged by the first time.

Second set of training rides

After the first recovery day on Sunday, now follow another 3 rides.

First we went to the Sant Salvador. It looks like we were early birds, there were only few people going up at that time. The weather was rather good, but this first section was just the first third of this tour, so we continued after only a short rest! At the end of the day we did 143km and 1650 m of altitude with average speed of 25,2 km/h.

On Tuesday we visited for the first time the Sierra Tramuntana, the coastal mountains. Via Bunyola to Orient, a quite frequent tour, so a lot of cyclists there. As the Café in Orient was quite full, we directly continued and raced down the great downhill road towards Alaró… for once I’m first, waiting for the others, when they usually have to wait for me after the uphill sections…

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We continued onwards to Inca for the coffee break and “refreshed” we then also climbed the Puig de Inca:

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So this tour ended with 120,5 km and 1450m altitude and average speed of 23,2 km/h.

On Wednesday then long and flat. Right? Well, depends on your definition. First visiting Randa, that was quite OK. With the road from Montuïri this is a nice start, not very steep to start with, then going up the Randa climb. Nice, a bit windy and not so warm today. So we continued in direction Santanyi and onwards to Cala Figuera. This second part of the ride was god-awful, all the time head-winds.  but finally at Cala Figuera we had some sun to relax:

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Now for once we had some luck. With head-winds on the way there, we had back-winds on the way home… unusual, normally you only have headwinds 😉 . During the tour we had average speed of only around 22km/h lag, so the way home was a pleasure going really fast! The final tour dates: 160,2 km with 1750m altitude and average speed of 25,0 km/h.

After three days riding, we now have another day break… and promptly it rains again. Currently at 14:00 there is a short break, but clouds are dark… however the forecast for the next days is great.

Pausing…

These first three days were really hard for me. Having skipped training mostly during winter, yes of course: my own fault, and then on day 2 90km and day 3 111km with altitudes of 1420m and 1700m, and with respectable speed.

OK, three days training and then one day for regeneration… As if planned that way, it started to rain today in the morning. We’ll see, if it clears and drys, maybe a few slow km later.

Mallorca … the start

For today a strike was announced to affect also the Stuttgart Airport… so sleep was not so well, and also very short. Got up at 3:00 for departure at 5:50. Then at the airport everything was quiet and we arrived in Palma around 7:50 as planned to get our bus transfer at 9 to Can Picafort.

… But what… Started to rain heavily!?!? Whats that?

Well, around 12 it stopped again and with the sun coming out, the streets were soon drying up.

With that, on to Cala Sant Vincenç…

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Our standard starter tour, today with 87km, 630m altitude and 24,5 km/h average speed.

Bike Season 2013 finished

For me the bike reason goes from October 1st to September 30th. So today was the last tour of the season, all tours still coming in 2013 will count to the season 2014 as “winter training”.

So what’s the statistic for the year?

  • At the end of December and in January, a couple of times working on the Ergometer in the living room, 960km to be more exact. Not enough to really conserve fitness into the spring, so I had to start slowly again.
  • Road-bike:
    • 5225 km in total, 57 tours, average 91,7km per tour;
      comparing to last year, a bit less km, fewer tours, but longer tours.
    • In total 210 hours of riding time; 25,22km/h total average speed
    • 43.300 meters total altitude
    • 34 Tours < 100km (Ø 70,1 km; 555m altitude, 25,19 km/h)
    • 23 Tours > 100km (Ø 123,6 km; 1063m altitude, 25,26 km/h)
  • Mountainbike: only used 4 times, 130km

Already looking forward to the next season (and hopefully that starts on coming Thursday) 🙂 and a “golden autumn”.

Link to my biking-page