June 2010

June was "Glocknertime" again. Before I turned 40 I decided to go up the Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse by bike. That was in early 2009. I climbed up the Glockner last year in terrible weather with heavy rain and 10 degrees Celsius at the start and a light shower at 1 degree Celsius at the top. So I decided that I have to come back next year in the hope for better conditions.

April and May didn´t look very promising. Lots of rain and cold weather. You can see the pale color of my legs - I haven´t got much sun on my training trips. The weekend before the bad weather got worse. There was heavy snowfall at the Glockner and I was prepared for even worse conditions than the year before. But then the weather outlook become better day by day. Before the weekend there was even hope for dry weather. As you can see in the pictures it was not only dry but also very warm and cloudless. For the first time in the year! Actually it was almost too warm. And because I´m still not used to be part of a bike race I have forgotten to drink. The second image shows me I guess around 3km before the finish line. Josef is taken the image and I throw the water bottle to him because I wanted to get rid of the extra weight. Of course it would have been better and more effective to eat less chocolate in the last couple of months or at least to drink all the water I have taken with me before but as mentioned above I´m not used to be part of a race. Despite the very warm weather I drank only 0,5 liters in more than 2 hours. I was completely dehydrated when I passed the line.

Despite that mistake and the fact that I was 4kg heavier than the year before ( I have planned to be 5 kg lighter then previous year! ) I was able to be almost 7 minutes faster. It took me 2:10:32. In fact I was truly fast till the final 3km. The guy who rides in front of me in the second image was 8 minutes faster which means that I have lost 8 minutes in approx. 3km! A clearly was totally empty when I crossed the line. But I was not the only one. The guy behind me in the second image was just 12 seconds faster at the end. So it´s a mix of a kind of break down in the finish and a very good finish of the rider in front of us. If I´m able to loose some weight I will be back next year. Now that I have finished two times I will take a high risk and try to finish in just below 2 hours. I know that it is almost impossible to improve by another 10 minutes but I will try because it doesn´t matter if I will finish once more but it would be fantastic to be under 2 hours.

It´s unbelieveable. Four years ago I didn´t do any sports at all. I have done a lot of biking and xc skiing before I was 30 years old but stopped completely for a couple of years. I stopped sport and smoking and as a consequence I became fat. Four years ago I could not even imagine to climb up such a mountain. When I started to ride my bike again I wasn´t able to climb a 2km hill at once. I had to get off the bike two times! Three years later I climbed the Grossglockner, a 20km climb with 8% ( the last 13km are 10%! only the first 7km are almost flat ), for the first time.

The last image taken by my wife shows Josef and me the day before the race. One year ago there was a storm on top what a difference!

settings main shot: A-Mode: 1/160@f2.8, 400ASA