Category Archives: Sports

My new bike: Ridley X-Trail

Yesterday I got my new bike: Ridley X-Trail

Unfortunately the weather was turning bad just exactly this weekend … the first real snow of the season. Well, tough luck… the bike had to be tested..

An “All-Road” or “Cross” bike has to stand that … and so do I…

Ridley XTrail - Nach erster Fahrt ... gleich im Schnee
Ridley XTrail – After the first tour … a snow tour
Ridley X-Trail - Nach erster Fahrt ... Schnee verstopft Schaltung
Ridley X-Trail – After the first tour … the fresh wet snow blocked the gear shifter

Road-Bike End-of-season tours

The weather this weekend was unusually good for November. So we did a first seson-end tour on Saturday and another one on Sunday 🙂

On Saturday one of my favourite “short” tours, via  Aidlingen, 7-Tannen, downhill via Holzbronn into the Nagold valley, up the hill at Seitzental … wow, what colors, deep green grass, deep blue sky and yellow/red leaves… still have goose-bumps…. and then the side-way towards the traditional “Wildberg-View”:

Wild-Berg Blick: Wolfgang, Peter, Siggi, Ralf, Ulli, Herbert und Ali hat das Bild gemacht.
Wildberg View: Wolfgang, Peter, Siggi, Ralf, Ulli, Herbert and Ali took the picture

With the way back via Sulz, Kuppingen and Gärtringen we went in total 80km.

On Sunday we did another tour: via Herrenberg, Öschelbronn, Bondorf and Ergenzingen into the Eyach valley and then to Haigerloch. From there on some side roads that I remembered in most parts from an RTF earlier this year towards Rottenburg and continues to Tübingen. On a 8th of November with best possible weather, sitting with cakes and coffee in the sun… how could this ever be any better 🙂

With the short return via Bebenhausen to Holzgerlingen the total tour was 102km.

We’ll continue to ride with the Mountainbike, but we’ll see if the weather will bring us another “year-end roadbike tour”…

Bike-Season 2015 finished

For me the bike reason goes from October 1st to September 30th. So last Saturday was my last day in Season 2015, and yesterday started the season 2016. So it’s time to summarize the Season 2015.

  • The winter season started quite well. We continues to do tours Saturday and Sunday regularly in the Schönbuch forest nearby. This brought quite some kilometres and conserved the form. Unfortunately I had an accident early December which caused a almost 5 week break, until I could restart in January to do further tours. During bad-weather weekends, we went a few times to the bike stadion in Öschelbronn, which was a lot of fun, and also I used my Tacx trainer to cycle at home in some evening and rainy weekends.
  • Al in all, that was a good base for the training camp on Mallorca in April. That was again a lot of fun, with a great groups. We did a lot of training tours there, long ones and also a bit faster than previous year. That was a very good base for the season. Unfortunately I had a cold, had to pause for one day and another day just do a short easy ride. This trend continued also in May, I was sick for two weekends, but could do nice runs on the other two weekends. All in all, a good spring start.
  • Road-bike:
    • 7802 km in total, 86 tours, on average 90,7km per Tour; in comparison to last year, a few years more, but especially we went really fast, more than 1 km/h faster average speed compared to last year
    • Total 291 hours of riding time; 27,27km/h total average speed
    • 74.970 meters altitude
    • 58 Tours < 100km (Ø 68,3 km; with 554m alt., 27,71 km/h)
    • 28 Tours > 100km (Ø 137,1 km; with 1531m alt., 26,36 km/h)
  • Mountainbike:
    • 15 Tours
    • 949km total
    • 10.030m altitude
    • ~43 hours riding time
    • 22,4 km/h average speed
  • Tacx Ergometer
    • 23 Trainings
    • 1.020 km
    • 33:45 hours training time
  • All in all, this was the “best year” ever during my cicling career
    • 7.800km road-bike
    • 8.751km “outside” i.e. Road-bike and MTB
    • 9.771km total. The 10km mark just missed

Already looking forward to the next season and a “golden autumn”, the first Saturday yesterday was nice, but today we have rain.

Link to my biking-page

Mallorca Training Camp 2015

Our training tours continued informally during the winter, nice but cold. Therefore we already looked forward to tours dressed in “short-short” and we planned great things. We always go after the Easter holidays and due to other private appointments, this years camp ended up being April 18th to May 2nd. Mid April is high-season in Mallorca for bikers … it was quite full. On most smaller roads, that is not a problem, the island is big enough. But some of the “nice places”, obviously are visited by almost everyone, e.g. Randa, Sant Salvador, Orient and the passes in the mountains, Sierra Tramuntana. But we are ourselves part of the biking tourism, i.e. nothing to complain about. And having your cake and cafe con leche in Petra on the central plaza is kind of very nice with 200 other bikers there 😉

Marktplatz Petra, von links: Brigitte, Hartmut, Ralf, Jürgen, Herbert
Central plaza in Petra, from left: Brigitte, Hartmut, Ralf, Jürgen, Herbert

The weather was very similar for basically the full two weeks, between 19 and 22°C, sometimes only little, sometimes a bit more wind, but never too strong… ideal for a training camp. We started well, and quite fast. The first two days a bit more flat and high average speed, 82km / 750Hm (Hm=>Meters altitude) / 27,8kmh and 117km / 950Hm / 28,1kmh. On the third day, a bit more intensity with more altitude. I think that worked well, it allows the body to get accustomed, and everybody was able to follow and no muscle aches, all could recover for the next day.

Tour-Start ... von links: Wolfgang, Brigitte, Jürgen, Ralf und Hartmut
Tour-Start … von links: Wolfgang, Brigitte, Jürgen, Ralf und Hartmut

With an exception … I was hit with a cold, starting Monday evening with coughing. On Tuesday morning I felt so bad, that I had to pause for a day. Wednesday was a planned pause-day, which everyone used to recover and I did as well, with a small 45km tour. That went well, on Thursday I was back in game and was not much more impacted for the rest of the training. However I obviously “gave” my cold also to others, Hartmut and Jürgen got sick and Brigitte a little bit during the next days.

On Thursday we continued fully motivated. Already the last three years we wanted to take a bus to Andratx in order to check out the western part and the beginning of the Sierra Tramuntana and the “coastal classic ride”. Never managed to do it … but this year. So we took the organized ride by Hürzeler, which departs at 9am. A small disadvantage for us, because we first have to cycle from Can Picafort to Paya de Muro, and be there at 8:30. So we had only a very rapid and short breakfast and packed some bread for the bus. But in the end, nothing to be nervous about, all went very well. It was not just one bus, they filled two large buses with two large trailers for bikes.

Port Andratx, Ankunft der Busse, Ausladen der Räder
Port Andratx, Arrival of the buses, unloading the bikes

It would have been too early to do the coastal classics already in the first week, so we took the part to Valldemossa and then took the downhill to Palmanyola and continued through the central part of Mallorca. The bus ride has one disadvantage, you lose a lot of time of the day, we could only start at about 10:45 in Andratx, but this is the only way to get there in a sensible manner (riding there is 60-70km…). The route was really nice, so it is definitely worth the trip: the tour: 121km / 1800Hm / 25,1kmh.

Pause in Valldemossa, Jürgen, Herbert, Tilman, Brigitte, Hartmut, Ralf
Breakin Valldemossa, Jürgen, Herbert, Tilman, Brigitte, Hartmut, Ralf

In the past years, we did not go to Cap Formentor, because of the bad road condition and the tunnel without any light, just not appealing. But this year: the road is freshly paved and there are reflectors in the tunnel … I was prepared and brought a portable lighting for my bike. So nothing to keep us away, except for some quite steep climbs … but we are here for the training, right? Well, definitely this is one of the nicest little tours and well worth the effort!

Jürgen am Leuchtturm Cap Formentor
Jürgen at the lighthouse Cap Formentor

As the main tour (“queens stage”) we did in the last years Soller – Ferry – Sa Calobra. This year another variant: we went to Soller, but then took the long climb to Puig Mayor and return via Monastery Lluc. The climb to the Puig is not as spectacular as Calobra (calobra is one of THE best climbs in the world), but quite strenuous and the ride through the mountains via the water reservoirs is really nice.

Am Puig, vor dem Tunnel, Blick Richtung Soller - Jürgen, Ralf und Hartmut
Resting after the climb, before the tunnel, direction Soller – Jürgen, Ralf und Hartmut

For those that are good enough, the crossing to Calobra is on the way, and Ralf actually took it, he went down to Calobra and rode up the Calobra pass! Fantastic!!! My legs were definitely not good enough for that. Our tour: 148,2km / 2.100Hm / 24,5kmh. For Ralf, you have to add about 20km and 900Hm altitude.

As resume: A great Training Camp!!! I’m already looking forward to next year 🙂

The totals will be slightly different for the participants, for I missed the Randa tour, Ralf did the extra Calobra pass … but all in all I think this was a very good result:

  • 14 Tours
  • 1.445 km
  • about 56 hours total cycling time
  • ca. 16.500m altitude
  • average speed about 25,7 kmh

And for those into Statistic, like me:

  • Saturday 18.Apr   – 82,1km – 27,8 kmh – 2:57:06 (riding time) – 750 Hm (m altitude)
  • Sunday 19.Apr.   – 116,7km – 28,1 kmh – 4:09:30 – 950Hm
  • Monday 20.Apr –  107,5km – 24,5 kmh – 4:21:53 – 1500Hm
  • Wednesday 22.Apr – 44,5km – 24,5 kmh – 1:50:00 – 350Hm
  • Thursday 23.Apr. – 121,1km – 25,1kmh – 4:49:00 – 1800Hm
  • Friday 24.Apr.       – 122,1km – 25,4 kmh – 4:48:32 – 1700Hm
  • Saturday 25.Apr. – 101,1km – 26,6 kmh – 3:47:55 – 1200Hm
  • Sunday 26.Apr.       – 65,0km – 25,5 kmh – 2:15:00 – 500Hm
  • Monday 27.Apr.  – 104,1km – 24,5 kmh – 4:15:23 – 1250Hm
  • Tuesday 28.Apr.  – 126,6km – 25,7 kmh – 4:56:31 – 1400Hm
  • Wednesday 29.Apr. – 105,8km – 25,1 kmh – 4:09:09 – 850Hm
  • Thursday 30.Apr. – 148,2km – 24,5 kmh – 6:02:48 – 2100Hm
  • Friday 1.Mai          – 113,9km – 26,3 kmh – 4:18:38 – 1200Hm
  • Saturday 2.Mai    – 86,7km – 26,7 kmh – 3:11:10 – 600Hm

Bike-Season 2014 finished

For me the bike reason goes from October 1st to September 30th. So yesterday was the last tour of the season, all tours still coming in 2014 will count to the season 2015 as “winter training”.

So what’s the statistic for the year?

  • The winter was “bad”, very lazy, didn’t do anything except for some “spinning” (term?) in the sports-center with our bike-club trainer. So the season had to start with Mallorca, which was really great. Also this year I had a lot of motivated and fit participants for the bike tours of the club… that was really a lot of fun.
  • Road-Bike:
    • 7005 km total, 84 tours, average 84,4km / tour; more km than last years and more tours. More shorter tours (due to the additional Thursday evening, but fast ones).
    • Total 276 hours of cycling time; 26,08km/h average across all tours
    • 67.000 m of total altitude
    • 57 Tours < 100km (Ø 63,8 km; with 516m altitude, 26,52 km/h)
    • 26 Tours > 100km (Ø 129,6 km; w. 1442m altitude, 25,1 km/h)
  • Mountainbike: only one tour, ~54km

Already looking forward to the next season and a “golden autumn”.

Link to my biking-page